The High Court has awarded Nalini Chenchooliah the full costs of her immigration proceedings after the State abandoned its plan to deal with her case by deportation and accepted that the European Union removal procedure should apply instead.
Ms Chenchooliah, a Mauritian national, arrived in Ireland in February 2005 on a student visa. She married a Portuguese national in September 2011 and later applied for an EU residence card. That application was refused in September 2012 because she had not established that her husband was exercising EU Treaty rights.
Her husband was subsequently imprisoned in Portugal following a drugs conviction. In October 2016, the Department of Justice told Ms Chenchooliah that it would not proceed by way of a removal order under the EU free-movement rules but instead proposed deportation under Irish immigration law.
She challenged that approach in the High Court. The case was eventually referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which delivered judgment on 10 September 2019. The Luxembourg court resolved the central issue in Ms Chenchooliah's favour, holding in effect that a person who had previously enjoyed rights under the EU free-movement regime remained subject to its removal procedures even after those current residence rights had ceased. A subsidiary question was resolved in the State's favour.
Following that judgment, the State changed position. It withdrew the deportation proposal and accepted that the matter would proceed by way of a removal order. The substantive High Court case could therefore be struck out by consent.
The remaining dispute concerned legal costs. The State argued that Ms Chenchooliah should recover no more than three-quarters because she had not succeeded on every issue.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys rejected that approach. He held that the withdrawal of the deportation proposal was the relevant event and that it had been caused by the CJEU judgment. There was no sufficient reason to depart from the normal rule that the successful party receives full costs.
Ms Chenchooliah was awarded all costs, including reserved costs, the CJEU proceedings and the costs hearing itself.