The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by P.O. and her infant son, S.O., against the High Court’s refusal to quash a Ministerial decision affirming deportation orders. The Court agreed with the conclusions of MacMenamin and Charleton JJ that the High Court was correct to dismiss the judicial review application.
The appeal concerned the Minister’s decision of 25 February 2013, which affirmed deportation orders made against the appellants. The orders themselves had not been challenged in the judicial review proceedings. The Supreme Court had granted a stay on deportation while an interlocutory injunction motion was pending.
That motion became moot when the Court finally determined the substantive appeal against the appellants. Justice Laffoy said the Court did not need to decide whether an injunction should have been granted for the period before the appeal was decided, and expressed no view on the parties’ arguments about that motion. The stay had remained in place up to the judgment.
A separate issue concerned an application for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union. The appellants withdrew that application after the respondents had filed submissions opposing it. Justice Laffoy found a clear default by the appellants’ legal advisers in making an application that was ultimately conceded to have no legal basis, and in not withdrawing it promptly after the respondents’ submissions of 24 October 2014.
The Court ordered the appellants to pay the respondents’ legal costs of those written submissions. Under Order 99, rule 7, the appellants’ solicitors must indemnify them for that amount personally, with the costs to be taxed if the parties cannot agree. The order was limited to the respondents’ 24 October submissions; it did not cover the hearing on 20 October.
The judgment also recorded a letter from the Chief State Solicitor’s Office stating that the deportation orders remained unchallenged and the Minister could not say they would not be enforced. The Minister remained open to fresh representations under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999, including humanitarian considerations concerning S.O. The judgment noted that he was born in the State and had lived there all his life.