The High Court dismissed a challenge to a deportation order made against a Chinese national convicted of several criminal offences, and released the State from an undertaking not to deport him.
In a judgment delivered on 6 October 2017, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys rejected the applicants’ claims that the Minister for Justice had failed to properly consider the family’s constitutional rights, the best interests of the children, EU law and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The father is the third named applicant. His two older children are Irish citizens; his wife and their third child are Chinese nationals. The judgment says the family had lived together in Ireland. The father’s permission to remain expired in August 2013. He was convicted of offences in 2013 and 2014, including drug offences, attempted cannabis cultivation and criminal damage, and received prison terms including an eight-year term with two years suspended. A deportation order was made on 13 June 2016.
The judge said the Minister had expressly considered the children’s interests, including the benefit of being raised by both parents, but was entitled to find those interests outweighed by other factors. The court found that assessment was not clearly unreasonable or unlawful. It also held there was no evidence the Irish citizen children would be compelled to leave Ireland if their father were deported, so the EU law claim based on the Zambrano judgment did not arise.
The judgment said the Minister had considered family rights and the possibility of relocation to China. The children’s unfamiliarity with China, schooling in Ireland and limited Mandarin were relevant difficulties, but the judge found they did not establish insurmountable obstacles. He also said that such obstacles, even if established, would be a factor to balance rather than an automatic bar to deportation.
The court upheld the Minister’s conclusion that the material did not establish substantial grounds for believing the father faced a real risk of re-prosecution or other prohibited mistreatment in China. The judge said the applicants had not shown that risk, including any claim of double punishment, had been assessed unlawfully.
The order dismissed the judicial review application and released the State from its undertaking not to deport the father. The court did not itself direct that deportation take place.