The High Court granted an Ugandan woman leave to challenge the Minister for Justice’s refusal to let her re-enter the asylum process, finding a possible material error in the assessment of certificates said to record the deaths of her partner and daughter. The ruling was at the leave stage: it did not determine whether the certificates were authentic or whether she qualified for protection.
The woman had arrived in Ireland in 2006 and sought asylum, saying she feared persecution over alleged involvement with the Lord’s Resistance Army. Her application was rejected on credibility grounds by the asylum authorities. Her later applications for leave to remain and subsidiary protection were also refused, and a deportation order was notified in December 2010.
In April 2011, she asked the Minister to use a statutory discretion to allow a fresh asylum application. She relied on two grounds: that she had learned her husband and child had been murdered, and that she had formed relationships with women and feared persecution because of her sexual orientation. The Minister refused the request in May 2011. An interim injunction had meanwhile restrained her deportation pending the leave application.
Justice Hogan said the applicant could not be faulted for failing to use a new administrative review process: the applicable legislation required challenges to the Minister’s original decision within 14 days, and the guidelines did not pause that deadline. On the sexual-orientation claim, he concluded that the Minister could properly find the information should have been raised earlier. The applicant had opportunities to do so, including in her 2009 subsidiary-protection application, and had not satisfactorily explained the omission.
The certificates, dated September 2009, were said to show that the woman’s partner and 10-year-old daughter died from gunshot wounds. The Minister rejected them as insufficient evidence, citing concerns that the hospital’s post-office box number differed from the number shown in online sources, among other credibility concerns. But the High Court noted that the certificates displayed the same box number the Minister said was missing.
The issue had not been raised by either party at the first hearing. Hogan re-listed the case for submissions and decided he could formulate a new ground before delivering judgment. He concluded the discrepancy could be material to the credibility assessment and proposed granting leave to challenge that assessment on this point. He said he would discuss the form of the order with counsel; the judgment does not record a final order beyond that proposed grant of leave.