The High Court awarded costs to the Minister for Justice and Equality after a group of applicants abandoned their challenge to a refusal of subsidiary protection. The court said the challenge had not become moot when the applicants were granted permission to remain in Ireland and their deportation orders were revoked.
In a judgment delivered on 16 April 2018, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the applicants had chosen not to continue because they did not consider the proceedings worth pursuing, rather than because they had obtained the benefit sought in their protection challenge. Costs therefore followed the outcome of the proceedings, which was that the applicants had abandoned the challenge.
The judicial review began in 2008 as an application for mandamus. The applicants’ claims evolved through several statements of grounds. By 2009 they were challenging decisions that the first and second applicants were ineligible for subsidiary protection, deportation orders against the first to sixth applicants, and seeking a decision on an application for leave to remain.
The case was later delayed in connection with proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union. An amended statement of grounds, dated 23 March 2016, was the version relied on at the time of the costs application. The judge said its reliefs were directed solely at the subsidiary protection refusal.
In July 2017, the applicants’ solicitors sought agreement that the deportation orders be revoked, permission to remain be granted, and a reasonable offer be made in respect of costs. The Minister’s solicitor replied that this appeared to mean the applicants were no longer pursuing the subsidiary protection challenge.
The deportation orders were revoked and permission to remain was granted on 18 January 2018. That decision was not conditional on the applicants dropping the judicial review. In February, their solicitors said the matter would be struck out and that they would seek costs.
The judge rejected the applicants’ position that they had largely succeeded. Citing earlier High Court decisions, he said a grant of permission to remain did not, by itself, make a challenge to a protection decision moot. He awarded costs to the Minister, including reserved costs, to be taxed if the parties could not agree the amount. The judgment decided the costs application; it did not determine the underlying subsidiary protection challenge.