The Supreme Court has quashed the Minister for Justice and Equality’s 1 September 2014 refusal of an anonymised applicant’s naturalisation application and remitted the matter for a fresh decision following an enhanced process.
In a judgment delivered on 31 May 2019, Chief Justice Clarke said it had not been demonstrated that the process used to decide what information could be disclosed had limited the applicant’s access to reasons only as far as necessary to protect legitimate State security interests. The Court did not prescribe the process the Minister must use.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as A.P. and referred to as Mr P., is an Iranian national who was granted refugee status in Ireland in December 1991. He applied for naturalisation in August 2011. After an earlier refusal was quashed by the High Court in 2014 because adequate reasons had not been given, the application was reconsidered. The Minister refused it again on 1 September 2014, citing national security and international relations considerations and withholding details from a confidential report.
The applicant sought judicial review of that refusal, including orders to quash it and require disclosure of the gist of the information relied on. The High Court refused relief, and the Court of Appeal upheld that decision. The Supreme Court granted leave to appeal in September 2018.
Chief Justice Clarke said naturalisation was a benefit or privilege, rather than an entitlement as of right, but that the applicant was entitled to make representations. Where more detailed reasons could practically be given but were withheld to protect legitimate interests, the decision-maker had to minimise the restriction on the entitlement to reasons. The earlier High Court ruling that certain documents, including a confidential report, could not be disclosed did not decide whether some information could be provided in another form, such as a synopsis.
The Chief Justice identified possible measures, including an independent assessment by a suitably cleared person, but said the judgment did not prescribe a legally required process. The Minister retained the final naturalisation decision and responsibility for deciding what information to disclose, subject to the courts’ role in reviewing privilege claims and the lawfulness of decisions through judicial review. He said courts could not use undisclosed material to decide the substantive merits of such a challenge.
The Court did not reach a final determination on whether the EU Charter applied. Chief Justice Clarke offered observations on that issue, and recorded that Justice O’Donnell reached the same result by a somewhat different legal route; Clarke agreed with O’Donnell’s judgment.