The Supreme Court upheld the transfer of two anonymised applicants’ international protection applications to Britain, rejecting their challenge to the use of fingerprints to check their identities and travel history. The judgment was delivered on 22 May 2019 by Mr Justice Peter Charleton, who concurred with the principal judgment of Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne, as identified in the source.
The applicants had sought asylum in Ireland on 16 December 2014. They initially gave names and addresses that the judgment describes as false, denied having passports or a visa for another EU country, and said they had travelled through several countries, including Britain. The judgment says their date of birth was correct. They disputed having been in Warsaw, where their fingerprints were on a British visa application.
Irish authorities sent the applicants’ fingerprints to Britain through the DublinNet secure communications system to check whether they had travelled through that jurisdiction. The judgment says Britain found records of multi-visit visas issued to the applicants, apparently as Kosovan nationals, on 23 October 2014 and due to expire a month later. Those records included passport numbers and names different from those supplied in Ireland.
On 16 March 2015, Ireland made a request for Britain to take responsibility for examining the applications under the Dublin III Regulation. Britain accepted the request on 13 April 2015. A transfer order followed on 19 May 2015. The judgment says the transfer was checked for possible refoulement, or return to a place where a person would face specified threats; the court concluded that this issue did not arise.
The Supreme Court considered whether the information request was permitted under the Dublin rules. It held that the rules allowed relevant, proportionate personal data to be exchanged for determining which member state was responsible, and that fingerprints could be shared for that purpose. It also said the applicants had been told that fingerprints could be shared with authorities in Ireland and internationally to establish identity and origin.
The court rejected the judicial review challenge and upheld the transfer. It said the applicants now accepted that they had held British visas, that the fingerprint information was correct and that the Dublin rules applied. The judgment also concluded that, on the facts, Britain was responsible for examining the applications. The ruling addressed responsibility for processing the claims; it did not determine whether the applicants qualified for international protection.