The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by two South African citizens who sought to challenge Ireland’s designation of South Africa as a safe country of origin and the refusal of their applications for international protection.
W.P.L. and B.P. applied for protection in Ireland in January 2021. The International Protection Office refused refugee and subsidiary protection declarations in August 2022 and treated South Africa as a safe country of origin.
The applicants appealed. The International Protection Appeals Tribunal granted them an oral hearing in November 2022 and accepted that South Africa had a high crime rate and that they and family members had experienced crime. However, it found that they had not established a well-founded fear of persecution and that state protection, while imperfect, remained effective and accessible.
They later brought High Court judicial review proceedings challenging both that decision and South Africa’s safe-country designation. The High Court dismissed their case in 2024 and refused the statutory certificate required to appeal its ruling on the Tribunal decision.
Mr Justice Anthony Collins held that this refusal was decisive for Grounds 6 to 8 of the appeal. Under the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000, that part of the High Court ruling was final unless the High Court itself certified an appeal. The Court of Appeal therefore had no jurisdiction to reconsider it.
The remaining grounds challenged the designation and maintenance of South Africa as a safe country. The court held that the designation had played no material role in how the applicants’ protection claims were actually decided: they received an oral hearing and their cases were examined on their individual merits.
Because the Tribunal decision was now final, possible future effects of the designation were too speculative to give them a sufficient legal interest in challenging it.
The appeal was dismissed in full. The State’s cross-appeal was allowed to the extent that the High Court had found the applicants had standing to maintain that challenge. Costs were provisionally proposed in favour of the respondents.