The High Court has refused a judicial review challenge to the Minister for Justice’s decision that a marriage between an Indian woman and a Latvian man was one of convenience for immigration purposes.
The woman had sought to quash a 12 November 2021 decision refusing her a residence card as a family member of an EU citizen. The decision followed an earlier refusal and review process. Mr Justice Cian Ferriter held that the applicants had not established that the decision or the process leading to it was unlawful. He refused the relief sought.
The woman said she met the man at work in February 2012, began living with him in April and married him in September. She said the relationship later broke down after his infidelity and the birth of a child with another woman. In written submissions, she relied on material including travel to Latvia together in 2016, documents addressed to the man at their claimed shared Dublin residence, joint tax assessment records, wedding photographs and letters of support.
The Minister relied heavily on the man’s February 2018 interview with the Garda National Immigration Bureau, conducted under caution. The judgment records that he admitted the marriage was not real, that he married the woman so she could obtain immigration papers, and that they had never lived together. He also said he was in a relationship with another woman during the marriage; a child was born to that woman in 2013.
The woman challenged the reliability of the interview. The man later provided an affidavit denying that he made the recorded admissions, and she argued that he had limited English and had not been given an interpreter. The judge held that the decision-maker was entitled to treat the affidavit as unsupported assertion and rely on the interview record. He also found that the decision had engaged with the applicants’ submissions, including their challenge to the interview’s reliability. Typographical errors in the decision, including an incorrect year for the man’s departure from Ireland, did not make it unlawful.
The woman also argued she should have been interviewed before the review decision. The judge said there is no automatic right to an oral interview in these cases. He distinguished another High Court case, Z.K., where an adverse credibility assessment had been made without an oral process despite a plausible, documented account from both spouses. Here, he found that the woman’s written case was that the man had not made the recorded admissions or had not understood them—not that he had made them but was lying and her conflicting account should be preferred. Given how she advanced her case, the judge held that fairness did not require an oral interview.
The ruling concerns the challenge to the residence-card decision. The judgment notes that separate judicial review proceedings over refusal of permission under a student-related scheme had been adjourned pending this case.