The High Court dismissed an Algerian man’s application for judicial review of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s decision rejecting his appeal for international protection. The court did not grant the requested relief to quash that decision.
The man said his employer had accused him of misappropriating money while he was in France in July 2017, and that he feared harm from the employer. The tribunal rejected the core personal elements of his account. It found his failure to respond to the accusation or take a call from his employer undermined his account, and considered it not credible that he would have fallen under suspicion given his lack of access to the money in question.
The man applied for protection in Ireland on 20 November 2017 after travelling from France on a visitor visa. The International Protection Office rejected his claim in April 2019. The tribunal dismissed his appeal on 19 August 2019, following an oral hearing in July. He then sought judicial review, primarily asking the High Court to quash the tribunal’s decision.
The application raised five grounds. The man argued that the tribunal should not have relied on his failure to contact the employer he feared, and that it had not adequately explained why the employer’s alleged fraudulent practices would not put him at risk. He also challenged the tribunal’s treatment of allegations that the employer had bribed and blackmailed a tax official, its reference to a lack of evidence that the employer was violent, and its credibility findings as speculative and insufficiently attentive to cultural context.
Justice Richard Humphreys rejected those arguments. He said the tribunal could consider all relevant circumstances, including whether the man had engaged with the person he said he feared. The judge found there was no tribunal finding that the employer had bribed or blackmailed a tax official, and no requirement to make a specific finding on every detail of the account. He also said the tribunal’s reasoning about the man’s lack of access to the allegedly misappropriated money addressed why he would not have been suspected.
The judge said the claim of blackmail and threats had not been specifically accepted by the tribunal, and that the challenge to the violence finding did not reflect the context of the man’s claim, which concerned fear of physical violence. He also declined to second-guess the tribunal member’s credibility assessment, noting that the member had seen and heard the man. The judgment said the tribunal had considered country-of-origin information and found no basis to conclude that it ignored cultural context.
The court dismissed the application. It did not overturn the tribunal’s decision.