The High Court refused an application for an interlocutory injunction that would have restrained the transfer of an asylum applicant to the United Kingdom under the Dublin II Regulation. Mr Justice Cooke ruled on 17 January 2012 that the UK’s acceptance of Ireland’s take-back request was timely and valid, and that the applicant had not raised a fair issue for judicial review on that point.
The dispute concerned the timing of the UK’s response. Ireland sent its take-back request on 11 October 2011, relying on a Eurodac record showing that the applicant had applied for asylum in the UK in 2003 and had been refused. On 19 October, the UK sought further information about her whereabouts after June 2007 and said the request was denied pending that information. Ireland asked the UK to re-examine its response on 7 November; the UK formally accepted the request on 9 November.
The applicant argued that the UK’s acceptance came too late under the two-week deadline for Eurodac-based requests in Article 20(1)(b) of the Dublin II Regulation. She submitted that the re-examination procedure in Article 5(2) of the Commission Regulation could not extend that deadline, making the 9 November acceptance invalid.
The court rejected that interpretation. It held that the two-week period was satisfied when the UK gave its negative reply within the deadline; a subsequent request for re-examination did not reopen or reactivate it. The three-week period for seeking re-examination ran from receipt of the negative reply. The court therefore concluded that the UK’s 9 November acceptance was valid and that the timing argument did not meet the first limb of the Campus Oil test for interim relief.
The judge also said that, in any event, he would refuse an injunction on discretionary grounds. The judgment records that the applicant had acknowledged her earlier UK asylum application and refusal, and that her later Irish asylum application had been withdrawn. It states that she had no permission to remain in Ireland and that granting an injunction would interfere with the Minister’s statutory obligations. The application was refused. The ruling concerned interim relief; it did not decide the underlying application for leave to seek judicial review.