The High Court has granted S.M. leave to appeal a test case concerning how the Minister for Justice should assess humanitarian considerations when reviewing a refusal of permission to remain in Ireland.
In a judgment delivered on 6 March 2026, Mr Justice Conleth Bradley certified a question of law as being of exceptional public importance and suitable for appeal to the Court of Appeal.
The ruling follows an earlier High Court judgment, [2025] IEHC 629, which rejected S.M.'s judicial review challenge to a ministerial decision of October 2024. That decision had maintained an earlier refusal to grant him permission to remain under section 49 of the International Protection Act 2015.
The principal judgment found that the Minister's review had sufficiently engaged with S.M.'s individual circumstances, including material concerning his employment, community and church involvement, voluntary activities, medical position and humanitarian considerations.
S.M. argued that his case was comparable to an earlier High Court decision, A (Albania), where a permission-to-remain decision was quashed for lack of genuine engagement. Mr Justice Bradley rejected the suggestion that the judgments conflicted, finding that the facts and reasoning processes were different.
However, the court accepted that a broader legal issue arising from the case warranted appellate clarification. The certified question asks whether, when exercising the section 49 review power, the Minister may balance the State's interest in maintaining an orderly international protection and immigration system against the applicant's individual facts, rights and humanitarian circumstances when deciding whether there is "something more" sufficient to justify permission to remain.
The case had previously been selected as a pathfinder. The court was told that about 126 cases were on a holding list and that between 90 and 95 may share a similar factual matrix.
The certification does not overturn the earlier judgment. It permits the identified legal issue arising from that decision to proceed on appeal.