The High Court refused A.P. leave to seek judicial review of the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to revoke a deportation order. The court also adjourned the matter to allow time for any application for leave to appeal, which would have to be made on notice to the respondents.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered the judgment on 14 November 2016. The case concerned the threshold for permission to bring judicial review under section 5 of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000: whether A.P. had shown substantial grounds for challenging the decision.
A.P. arrived in Ireland from Pakistan in 2003 and held work permits for limited periods through November 2010. The judgment states that he was unlawfully present thereafter. A deportation order was made in February 2013, but was revoked after A.P. applied for asylum while detained. His asylum application was refused on credibility grounds, and he later applied for subsidiary protection.
In January 2015, his solicitors withdrew the subsidiary protection application and sought leave to remain. Counsel for A.P. submitted that this was done on the understanding that leave to remain would be granted. The judge said that, if the solicitors held that understanding, it was unilateral and could not be attributed to the Minister. The Minister formally refused subsidiary protection in August 2015 and proposed deportation. A second deportation order, accompanied by refusal of leave to remain, followed on 1 December 2015.
A.P. later asked the Minister to revoke that order and sought to re-enter the subsidiary protection process. The Commissioner said he had no authority to reopen it. After A.P. was arrested and detained under the deportation order on 27 September 2016, he brought a separate Article 40 application concerning his detention and was released on bail. That inquiry was still ongoing when the judicial review application came before the High Court.
A.P. argued that the Minister should publish criteria for leave-to-remain and revocation decisions, and that he should have been told the specific time of his deportation. The judge found no substantial grounds for either claim. He said the challenge could not use the later revocation process to reopen issues that could have been raised against the December 2015 deportation order. He also considered revocation to be a discretionary process and said the applicant had received notice of the intention to deport and an opportunity to make submissions.
On notice of timing, the judge relied on an earlier ruling and rejected the argument that the Minister’s decision on a revocation request had to precede deportation, because that decision did not suspend enforcement. The court refused leave; it did not determine a full judicial review of the Minister’s decision.