The High Court has granted relief in a judicial review of an asylum appeal decision after finding that the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) relied on unsupported assumptions and misunderstood some of the country information before it.
Mr O, a Nigerian national, claimed that a crowd attacked him at his apartment in Nigeria because they believed he and his housemates were homosexual. He said he was heterosexual. He later claimed asylum in Ireland.
IPAT refused his appeal on 27 September 2018, denying both refugee status and subsidiary protection. Mr O then brought judicial review proceedings challenging that decision.
In a judgment delivered on 14 November 2019, Mr Justice Max Barrett rejected arguments that the tribunal’s decision was unclear or vague. He said its reasons showed that the appeal had failed on credibility grounds.
However, the judge found that several elements of the tribunal’s credibility assessment involved conjecture. These included assumptions about whether neighbours would attack people they knew, what impression housemates’ visiting girlfriends might create, whether a landlord would report a tenant whose rent was paid on time, and whether Mr O’s inability to identify alleged attackers undermined his account. The court said there was no evidence supporting those conclusions and that they did not necessarily reflect general truths.
The judge also found that IPAT had not fully appreciated the country information submitted. The tribunal had described it as relating to problems faced by homosexual people in Nigeria. The judgment said the material also addressed risks to people perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be homosexual. The court concluded that this misunderstanding meant the evidence had been misunderstood. It also found that IPAT had failed to take adequate account of Mr O’s explanations and had relied on irrelevant considerations and unfounded assumptions.
Although the court found no issue with the tribunal’s conclusions about how Mr O travelled to Ireland, it granted the relief sought in the notice of motion dated 8 November 2018. The judgment said it was impossible to know what overall conclusion IPAT would have reached without the identified deficiencies. It did not itself grant refugee status or subsidiary protection.