The High Court refused an Albanian man’s application for leave to seek judicial review of the Minister for Justice’s refusal of subsidiary protection, finding that none of his grounds disclosed an arguable case.
Mr Justice McDermott delivered the judgment on 14 March 2014. The case concerned a decision dated 10 April 2008, which confirmed that the Minister had considered the man’s application and determined he was not eligible for subsidiary protection. The outcome left an earlier deportation order unchanged.
The applicant, anonymised in the judgment as R. P., said he fled Albania after members of a criminal family attacked him and later shot his brother dead. He claimed the family threatened his relatives and that he feared serious harm if returned. These were his claims, not findings made by the court in this judicial review.
The Minister made a deportation order on 5 October 2006, before Ireland’s subsidiary protection regulations came into force. The applicant was notified of the order in November 2006 and was allowed to submit an application. After an initial dispute over whether that application would be considered, earlier judicial review proceedings were settled on terms that it would be assessed.
A letter issued on 4 March 2008 wrongly said the Minister had decided not to accept or consider the application. The court found that this covering letter was issued in error: the accompanying determination had in fact assessed the application’s merits. A corrected letter on 10 April confirmed the substantive refusal. The court said the error was regrettable but had been clarified, and found no arguable basis to challenge the decision on the grounds that the application had not been considered.
The applicant also argued that officials had failed to consider material he supplied, including country information and a police report concerning his brother’s death, and had relied on country information that was not disclosed to him. The court reviewed the determination and found that it quoted and relied on material submitted by the applicant, including Canadian reports on blood feuds. It accepted that the decision maker had considered the documents, assessed the country information, and had not acted unfairly by relying on an accessible UK Home Office report.
The court also rejected the challenge to the assessment of credibility and the claim that relevant country conditions were inadequately considered. It refused leave to apply for judicial review. The ruling determined only that the applicant had not shown an arguable case for bringing the review; it did not reconsider the subsidiary protection application itself.