The High Court has refused an application to quash a decision transferring the asylum applications of an anonymised Nigerian woman and her infant to the UK under the Dublin III Regulation.
The applicants challenged a decision dated 10 September 2015 by the Refugee Applications Commissioner. They argued that the authorities should have waited for a medical report, failed to assess the infant’s best interests, made a late take-charge request and did not explain the purpose of the woman’s interview.
In a judgment delivered on 17 January 2017, Mr Justice O’Regan found that the relevant UK take-charge request was made on 14 April 2015, within the applicable time limit. He said the Irish authorities’ letter of 13 August, which added information about the child’s birth, amended the earlier request rather than replacing it. The child was born in Ireland in May 2015, after the woman’s asylum application was lodged.
The judge also rejected the complaint about the Article 5 interview. The woman had received a letter explaining its purpose, and the interviewer told her before questioning that the interview concerned visas and responsibility for examining her asylum application, not the merits of her asylum claim. The court held that the interview’s purpose was to help determine which member state was responsible, and that its failure to include a separate best-interests inquiry did not breach fair procedure or EU law in the circumstances.
The applicants also argued that the decision did not assess whether it was in the child’s best interests to remain in Ireland. The judge interpreted Article 20.3 as addressing whether a child’s situation should be treated as inseparable from a family member’s for responsibility purposes, rather than as a basis to displace the general rule that one member state examines the application. He found no basis in the material before him to treat the infant’s situation as separate from his mother’s.
The decision did not refer to a 4 September 2015 letter raising possible psychological vulnerability and requesting that no decision be made until a medical report was received. The judge noted that the decision said the file and its contents had been considered, and held that the vulnerability concerns did not create a basis to disapply the transfer rules.
The court concluded that the applicants’ interpretation of the regulation could not succeed and refused certiorari. It did not grant the order sought to quash the transfer decision.