The High Court has refused an applicant’s challenge to a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision that her asylum appeal could be decided without an oral hearing and that relocation within Georgia was available to her and her son.
In a judgment delivered on 7 July 2006, Mr Justice McGovern held that the Tribunal had not acted outside its powers by deciding the appeal on the papers. The Refugee Applications Commissioner had found that the applicant, without reasonable cause, did not apply for asylum as soon as reasonably practicable after arriving in Ireland. Under the statutory scheme, that finding meant the appeal was to be determined without an oral hearing. The Tribunal’s powers were limited to affirming the Commissioner’s recommendation or setting it aside and recommending that refugee status be granted; it could not set aside only the no-oral-hearing finding and order an oral appeal.
The applicant had argued that illness and medical difficulties, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, explained the timing of her asylum application. The High Court found that the Tribunal had not considered that delay issue. However, the court said the applicant could have challenged the Commissioner’s decision in these judicial review proceedings, in addition to or independently of her challenge to the Tribunal. It concluded that the Tribunal itself had no power to allow an oral hearing in the circumstances.
The applicant, born in Abkhazia, said she had suffered persecution there because she had married a Georgian man, and that her son had also been ill-treated. She alleged that she had been beaten while pregnant, raped on several occasions, and that her son had been beaten and tortured. The Tribunal had given her the benefit of the doubt regarding allegations of rape and assault and accepted that she had been traumatised, but found that relocation to another part of Georgia was accessible and would not be unduly harsh.
The High Court rejected the challenge to that assessment. It found sufficient evidence for the Tribunal’s conclusion, including evidence that the applicant had travelled to Georgia regularly and had left her son there with his father. The court accepted that the son’s position required additional consideration, but found no legal error in the Tribunal’s conclusion that internal relocation was an option for him as well.
The court refused the reliefs sought. It did not grant an oral hearing or overturn the Tribunal’s decision.