The High Court has refused an applicant leave to appeal after dismissing his judicial review challenge in an earlier judgment concerning a marriage determined by the executive to be one of convenience.
In a judgment delivered on 16 April 2018, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the proposed appeal question was whether a marriage entered into in Ireland under the Civil Registration Act 2004 could be treated as a nullity following a later executive determination that it was a marriage of convenience, or whether rights could still arise from it depending on the circumstances.
The judge said the question was tendentious. In his view, the executive determination itself did not render the marriage a nullity. Rather, the applicant’s failure to challenge that determination in a timely and successful way prevented him from arguing in later proceedings that the marriage was not one of convenience.
The applicant also argued that conflicting High Court decisions justified an appeal. Mr Justice Humphreys acknowledged that his earlier judgment disagreed with Hogan J’s conclusion in *Izmailovic v Commissioner of An Garda Síochána*. He said he had concluded that *Izmailovic* did not properly account for earlier decisions, including a Supreme Court ruling and a judgment by Barron J, and had not addressed the risks of using civil marriage as a mechanism of fraud.
The judge identified a further obstacle: even if his view that a marriage of convenience was a nullity in law was wrong, that issue would not determine the case. In the earlier judicial review decision, he had independently found that constitutional rights could not be asserted on the basis of a marriage of convenience, even if the marriage were valid. He had also rejected the application through the discretion available in judicial review.
The court dismissed the application for leave to appeal. The judgment concerns permission to appeal; it does not grant leave or alter the earlier dismissal of the judicial review application.