The High Court ruled that a woman detained at the Dóchas Centre was lawfully held under a warrant issued to the Governor of Mountjoy Prison. Mr Justice Binchy gave his reasons on 17 February 2017 for a decision made on 6 February that her detention was in accordance with law.
The woman was detained under section 5 of the Immigration Act 1999, following a deportation order made on 21 September 2011. She had not complied with that order. She was arrested at her home on 9 January 2017 and taken to the Mountjoy Prison campus, where she was placed in the custody of the governor responsible for the Dóchas Centre.
She challenged her detention on three grounds. She argued that the Dóchas Centre was a separate prison and was not among the places prescribed for immigration detention; that the warrant was invalid because it named the Governor of Mountjoy rather than the Dóchas Centre’s governor; and that the State could not have a concluded intention to deport her while an application for permission to remain was awaiting a decision.
On the first two grounds, the judge found that the Dóchas Centre formed part of Mountjoy Prison for legal purposes. He relied on evidence from Governor Mary O’Connor that she was responsible for the women’s facility, while reporting through other governors with overall responsibility for Mountjoy. The court distinguished the Dóchas Centre from the Training Unit and St Patrick’s Institution, which it said were separately administered prisons. The woman had therefore not established that she was held in an unprescribed place or that the warrant was invalid because of its addressee.
The woman’s solicitors had applied on 30 January 2017 under the European Communities (Free Movement of Persons) Regulations 2015 for her to be treated as a family member of an EU citizen, based on her dependence on her aunt. The court rejected the argument that the pending application prevented enforcement of the existing deportation order.
The judge followed the reasoning in a contemporaneous High Court decision, C.A. v Governor of Cloverhill Prison. He noted that the respondent had made no equivalent concession to the one in B.F.O. v Governor of Dóchas Centre, where the court had found no concluded intention to deport in the particular circumstances. The applicant accepted that the court was bound to follow C.A. The judge accordingly found her detention lawful.