The High Court has refused an applicant leave to bring a judicial review challenge to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of his protection appeal. The sole proposed challenge was that the Tribunal decided the appeal without additional written submissions after the applicant’s solicitors had said they intended to lodge them.
In an ex tempore decision on 27 October 2023, Ms Justice Hyland said the applicant had not shown substantial grounds to challenge the decision on that basis. The court refused leave in its entirety; it did not conduct a substantive judicial review of the Tribunal’s decision.
The applicant, a 43-year-old Kosovo national, entered the State with his adult son in or around December 2022 and sought international protection. He claimed agents of a large company in Kosovo threatened him to withdraw a civil claim after his son was killed by electrocution. The International Protection Office refused his application on 4 April 2023, finding his account lacked credibility.
On 9 May 2023, the applicant’s solicitors lodged an appeal notice and “skeleton grounds of appeal”. Their letter said they intended to brief counsel and lodge detailed grounds and written submissions, and requested an oral hearing. The Tribunal refused an oral hearing and rejected the appeal on 26 July 2023. It considered the credibility issues could be resolved without a hearing and, according to the High Court’s account, ultimately made no adverse credibility findings against the applicant.
The judicial review application did not challenge the refusal of an oral hearing itself. It argued that fair procedures required the Tribunal to notify the applicant whether a hearing would take place so his solicitors could tailor further submissions. Justice Hyland said the letter did not ask the Tribunal to notify them of its hearing decision, and the Tribunal could not have known from it that the applicant was waiting for that decision before submitting material.
The judge said the Tribunal’s practice note allowed appeal grounds to be augmented later, but did not require the Tribunal to wait for further submissions or to decide the hearing question first. The appeal notice had been lodged in an accelerated appeal process, where the stated practice note warned that an appellant should not expect further communication before the decision. The applicant’s solicitors could have submitted the additional material without waiting, the court said.
The judge also considered counsel’s argument that further submissions were particularly important to contest Kosovo’s designation as a safe country of origin. The court noted that the appeal papers referred instead to Albania in one passage, while the decisions and evidence concerned Kosovo; a footnote attributed the Albania references to an apparent error. The judge said the applicant had raised the safe-country issue but had not identified the evidence said to undermine the designation or explained why further submissions were not made.
Noting that 77 days passed between the appeal notice and the Tribunal’s decision without an explanation for the missing submissions, Justice Hyland concluded that no substantial grounds had been established. Leave to seek judicial review was refused.