The High Court has dismissed an application for leave to appeal after previously refusing to quash an adverse decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) in a case involving a Nigerian mother and her minor child.
In a judgment delivered on 18 December 2018, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the applicants had not raised with the tribunal their proposed argument that the child might belong to a social group of homeless and destitute children in Nigeria. The judge said a tribunal could not be faulted for failing to consider a group that had not been identified to it, and the applicants could not raise the point for the first time in judicial review or on appeal.
The proposed appeal question concerned whether IPAT was required to examine that social-group claim when considering a claim made on behalf of a four-year-old child born in Ireland and liable to deportation to Nigeria. The question was advanced in written submissions as one of exceptional public importance. The judge described it as poorly framed and said the central point was difficult to identify.
He said the tribunal would have to consider such a group if the applicant made the case to it and the other requirements for international protection were met. But he also addressed the substance of the proposed argument, saying that destitution alone did not amount to persecution for a Convention reason or serious harm qualifying for subsidiary protection. He noted that extreme circumstances involving a policy of denying socio-economic rights to a minority, or targeted economic deprivation by an oppressive ruling elite, could raise a different issue. He said no such case had been made.
The judge also referred to the earlier judgment’s finding that the mother had found employment in Nigeria over a nine-year period after the alleged persecution or serious harm. He said this undermined the asserted risk of destitution on which the applicants’ argument depended.
The court dismissed the leave to appeal application. The judgment did not grant leave or alter the earlier refusal to quash IPAT’s decision.