The Court of Appeal has allowed the Minister for Justice and Equality’s appeal and set aside a High Court order quashing the refusal of a residence-card application by a Pakistani man who said he depended on his brother, a UK citizen living in Ireland.
The application was made under rules implementing the EU Free Movement Directive. The brothers sought recognition of the younger man as a “permitted family member”. The Minister refused the application in 2017 and upheld that decision on review in November 2018, finding that the evidence did not establish dependency in Pakistan or Ireland.
The High Court granted certiorari in September 2019 and remitted the application to the Minister for reconsideration. It concluded that Ireland was the relevant country for assessing dependency and that the Minister had acted unreasonably in rejecting the evidence. The Minister appealed.
The Court of Appeal held that the applicant had to establish dependency in Pakistan, where he lived before arriving in Ireland in January 2014, and also in Ireland because he was already living there when he applied in May 2017. It rejected the High Court’s conclusion that Ireland alone was the relevant country. The court said dependency in the country of origin or another country from which an applicant came must be assessed first; in this case, the Ireland question did not need to be decided once dependency in Pakistan had not been established.
The brothers said the older man had supported his brother through money transfers and education and living costs. The court noted evidence of direct transfers to the younger brother in Pakistan totalling about £3,765 between September 2012 and January 2014. The older brother also sent money to their father, which the younger brother said benefited the family. The court excluded those payments to the father from its assessment, saying there was no evidence showing how the money was used or establishing indirect dependency.
The court said the Minister could not simply ignore the brothers’ statements, but was not required to accept them at face value without supporting documents. It found that the direct transfers were intermittent and, without evidence of the younger man’s living costs or overall financial circumstances in Pakistan, the Minister’s decision that dependency had not been proved was not unreasonable or irrational. The unsupported statement that he was unemployed did not fill that evidential gap.
The court allowed the appeal and vacated the High Court order. It did not determine whether the younger brother was in fact dependent on his brother. The Minister was successful, and the court’s provisional view was that she should receive her costs in both courts. The respondents had 14 days to seek a further hearing on costs; absent such an application, the proposed costs order would be made.