The High Court struck out a judicial review by a Libyan asylum applicant after the Minister agreed to consider his request to remain in Ireland under the Dublin III regulation. The court ordered costs to the applicant, including reserved costs, to be taxed if the parties could not agree them.
The case concerned a decision to transfer the applicant’s asylum application to the UK. He had applied for asylum there twice, in 2012 and 2015, and both applications were refused, the judgment records. He arrived in Ireland in December 2015 and applied for asylum. In March 2016, the Refugee Applications Commissioner decided to transfer his application to the UK. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal upheld that decision in August 2016.
The applicant’s solicitor later told the authorities he had a medical condition and asked the Minister to use discretion under Article 17 of the Dublin III regulation to allow him to remain in Ireland. The Minister did not decide that request. The applicant began judicial review proceedings, and in July 2017 the High Court allowed him to amend his case to challenge the failure to consider the Article 17 issue. A week later, the State indicated that the Minister proposed to consider the request. The applicant resubmitted it in August 2017.
In deciding costs, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the Minister’s agreement to decide the request had made the proceedings moot, and that agreement was the event in the case. He ruled that costs therefore favoured the applicant.
The judge noted a legal complication: in a separate case, M.A. v Minister for Justice and Equality, he had held that the Minister was not entitled to decide the Article 17 issue. He said the agreement could not lawfully be implemented under the legislation as it then stood, but that the State would have to give effect to at least the spirit of its offer by ensuring someone considered the request. Those comments did not determine the pending Article 17 request.
The court struck out these proceedings with costs to the applicant, including reserved costs. A separate judicial review seeking an order requiring the Minister to decide the Article 17 claim remained pending, awaiting the outcome of a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union in M.A.