The High Court quashed a deportation order against an anonymised applicant after finding that the official responsible for final written advice to the Minister had not considered a medical report submitted on her behalf.
In a judgment delivered on 19 December 2013, Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh held that the failure breached section 3(6) of the Immigration Act 1999. He granted leave and made a final order of certiorari quashing the deportation order.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as N.J., was a Nigerian national who claimed asylum in Ireland in 2005. Her asylum claim was refused, as were later applications for subsidiary protection and leave to remain. A deportation order followed in November 2009.
The challenge focused on a report dated 6 July 2009 by Dr Eileen Keane. The applicant’s solicitors sent it to the Department in a supplemental submission in October 2009, after an official had completed an examination of the file and recommended deportation. The judgment records no evidence that receipt of the report was acknowledged.
A senior official, Ben Ryan, reviewed the recommendation in November 2009. Years later, in an affidavit and during cross-examination, he said he had considered Dr Keane’s report. The applicant disputed that account, pointing to the absence of any express reference to the report in the amended examination-of-file document and to inconsistencies in Ryan’s explanations for handwritten changes he had made.
The court rejected those explanations. It found that the handwritten words added to the document did not show that the later report had been considered, and that Ryan’s evidence did not establish that it had been. The judge accepted, on the balance of probabilities, that the report was not considered by the official responsible for the final written advice to the Minister.
The court said it was not its role to excuse the failure on the ground that considering the report might not have changed the outcome. Because the law required relevant matters to be considered before deportation, the resulting order was ultra vires and had to be set aside. The judgment quashed that deportation order; it does not state that the applicant was granted asylum or subsidiary protection.