The High Court has refused to quash a decision affirming a deportation order against an Albanian woman who challenged her removal from Ireland on mental health and human rights grounds.
In a judgment delivered on 1 October 2014, Mr Justice Barr considered the Minister’s decision of 4 May 2011 to leave in place an order made on 28 August 2006. The applicant, identified in the judgment as B.S., had been deported on the morning of 4 May 2011, before her solicitor received notice of the decision that afternoon.
The challenge followed a long immigration process. The applicant’s accounts of her past changed over time. She initially said she had left Albania for a better life, then alleged she had been abducted and forced into prostitution in Belgium and Italy. Later submissions said she had been forced to marry one of the men involved and feared he would find her. Refugee authorities rejected her credibility, and her asylum appeal and application for subsidiary protection were refused.
In 2010, she asked the Minister to revoke the deportation order, relying on reports about her anxiety, depression and risk of suicide, and on information about conditions in Albania. A file review in May 2011 considered reports by Dr Joan Giller and GP Dr Donal O’Donovan, both prepared in 2009, alongside country information. The review concluded that removal would not breach Articles 3 or 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Minister affirmed the order.
A further GP report, dated 21 April 2011, was faxed to the authorities at 6pm on 3 May. The applicant’s solicitor asked that deportation be deferred until the revocation request was decided. The court found that the new report had not been considered because it was submitted too late to be included in the file review.
The judge held that the Minister was entitled to conclude, on the medical evidence actually before him, that there was no real and substantial suicide risk that could only be avoided by revoking the order. The 2009 reports were old by the time of the decision, but the judge found it was not the respondents’ fault that they had not received newer evidence earlier. He also concluded that the Minister was right to find no breach of Article 8.
The court refused to make an order quashing the Minister’s decision. The judgment does not set out any further order.