The High Court has granted G. V. and another applicant leave to seek judicial review of decisions refusing their asylum appeals, after extending the time for them to bring the case. The court allowed the challenge to proceed on two grounds only and did not decide whether the tribunal’s decisions were correct.
The applicants, a married couple identified in the judgment as an ethnic Croat wife and an ethnic Serb husband, had fled Croatia in 1991 and later sought asylum in Ireland. Their appeals were refused by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal in decisions dated 11 and 15 September 2008. The High Court had previously set aside the tribunal’s initial refusals by consent and sent the appeals back for reconsideration by a different tribunal member.
The couple filed their applications for leave on 3 October 2008: seven days beyond the statutory deadline for the husband and two days beyond it for the wife. The judge rejected their explanation that their solicitors had waited for their former counsel to return from a legal conference. However, he said the short delays and the general merits of the proposed challenge had to be considered. He extended the filing period, finding good and sufficient reason to do so.
The court found substantial grounds to argue that the tribunal member had erred in concluding that the discrimination described in country-of-origin material did not amount to persecution under refugee law. The judgment recorded findings accepted by the tribunal member concerning discrimination against ethnic Serbs, difficulties faced by mixed Croat-Serb couples, employment barriers and property issues. The High Court expressly said it was not expressing a view on whether the tribunal member’s conclusion was right.
The second permitted ground concerns three earlier Refugee Appeals Tribunal decisions granting refugee status to applicants in Croat-Serb marriages. The judge said the 2008 decisions did not refer to those cases. He found substantial grounds to argue that the tribunal member had failed to consider one of them, from 2004, or give sufficient reasons for distinguishing it. The judgment also noted that the earlier case involved different facts and older country information, but said any distinction based on changed conditions should have been explained.
The applicants also alleged six material factual errors. The High Court was not satisfied that this ground met the substantial-grounds threshold. It therefore granted leave only on the two grounds concerning the meaning of persecution and the treatment of the earlier tribunal decisions. The judgment concerns permission to bring judicial review; it does not quash the asylum decisions or grant refugee status.