The High Court has quashed the refusal of Turkish national Ibrahim Ozkaya’s application for Irish citizenship and ordered the Minister for Justice to reconsider the case.
Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty delivered judgment on 9 March 2026 after finding that the September 2023 refusal did not adequately explain why Ozkaya’s exceptional circumstances had been disregarded.
Ozkaya has lived and worked in Ireland since February 2016 and applied for naturalisation on 8 March 2022. During the preceding year he had been outside Ireland for 159 days, including two lengthy visits to Turkey to care for his father after a cancer diagnosis. He also relied on difficulties caused by pandemic-era travel restrictions.
At the time, the law required one year of continuous residence immediately before an application but did not specify a fixed statutory number of permitted absence days. Departmental practice generally allowed six weeks for ordinary travel, with further discretion for exceptional circumstances.
The Minister refused the application on the basis that the continuous-residence requirement had not been met. However, the refusal letter referred to a residency calculator which was neither attached nor, the court was later told, actually in existence.
Gearty J found that the decision gave Ozkaya no meaningful explanation of whether discretion had been considered, what policy was applied or why his family and pandemic circumstances were insufficient.
The court also criticised the failure to respond to two letters from Ozkaya’s solicitors seeking clarification, although those letters carried an incorrect application number.
The judge rejected the State’s argument that reconsideration would inevitably produce the same result because 159 days was plainly too long. She held that Ozkaya was entitled to a lawful decision based on proper consideration and reasons.
The judicial review time limit was extended, the 2023 refusal was quashed and the application was remitted for a fresh decision under the pre-July 2023 legal regime.