The High Court has directed the Minister for Justice and Equality to decide expressly whether to extend the time for an applicant to seek a review of a finding that his marriage was one of convenience. The court lifted a stay on his deportation, leaving the Minister’s right to remove him in the meantime unaffected.
In a judgment delivered on 8 May 2018, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the Minister must make the decision within three months, after first allowing the applicant one month to make any additional submissions. The case was a judicial review, not a challenge to a refusal of an extension: the Minister had not yet decided the request.
The applicant, Muhammad Nadeem, was born in Pakistan and is a South African national. He came to Ireland in 2010 on student permissions, then received permission to remain as the family member of a Bulgarian EU citizen after marrying her in March 2015. In May 2017, the Minister found under the European Communities (Free Movement of Persons) Regulations 2015 that the marriage was one of convenience and that the applicant had provided false or misleading information about a material fact.
The judgment records that the applicant sent a written response but did not submit the required EU4 review form. His former solicitor said the form had been prepared and left with secretarial staff, where it was apparently mislaid. The Minister asked for clarification in a letter of 24 May 2017, but received no reply. The court said the applicant was bound by his solicitor’s acts and noted that a July 2017 deportation proposal would have made clear that no review had been acted on.
After being notified of a deportation order in January 2018, the applicant applied to extend the time to seek a review. The Minister later declined to give an undertaking not to deport him. The judge held that this refusal did not itself decide the extension request and that the Minister was required to give an explicit decision. The declaration ordered after further submissions set the three-month deadline and the one-month period for additional submissions.
The court did not grant the applicant a right to remain while that request was considered. It discharged the stay on deportation, without prejudice to the Minister’s right to remove him in the meantime. The judge said that if the Minister later grants an extension and then allows the review, the applicant can be brought back. The judgment did not resolve whether the time extension should be granted or revisit the original marriage finding.