The High Court refused an application by a Nigerian woman for an interlocutory injunction to restrain her deportation, finding she had not established a credible basis for a real risk of significant harm if returned to Nigeria.
Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh delivered judgment on 31 July 2015. The application concerned interim relief while the woman sought to challenge a refusal of subsidiary protection and a deportation order. The court assumed, for the purpose of deciding the injunction application, that there was a fair issue to be tried. It did not decide whether the underlying judicial review proceedings were still in being.
The woman had applied for asylum in 2007, initially alleging persecution in Nigeria. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal later recorded that she had told it her account was fabricated and that she had come to Ireland seeking a better life. Her asylum appeal was refused. She subsequently applied for subsidiary protection, which the Minister refused on 20 April 2012. A deportation order followed on 9 May 2012.
The proceedings had a complicated history. The court noted that leave to seek judicial review had been granted on one ground in September 2012, but no notice of motion for the substantive judicial review was ever issued. The respondents argued that, as a result, no proceedings remained in existence. The judge said those procedural arguments might have merit, but could potentially be repaired with a proper explanation and justification. He left that issue for another day.
The woman argued that deportation could make it difficult for her to return to Ireland if she later succeeded and needed to attend an oral hearing on her protection application. She also relied on her fear of persecution, difficult conditions in Nigeria, and the lack of family or financial support there. Those points were submissions and affidavit evidence, not findings that she would face those conditions or risks.
Applying the Supreme Court’s guidance in Okunade, the judge rejected the difficulty of returning to Ireland as insufficient to overcome the ordinary position favouring enforcement of a deportation order. He also found that the material did not establish a real risk of significant harm to her personally. He noted that the earlier protection decisions had not accepted that she faced a risk, and that the claims before him referred generally to problems in Nigeria without identifying a source of persecution or evidence that she had herself been harmed there.
The court therefore refused the interlocutory injunction. The judgment did not determine the underlying judicial review challenge or the lawfulness of the protection refusal or deportation order.