The High Court ruled that a small public service vehicle (SPSV) driver’s licence has a fixed five-year duration and cannot be shortened to match an applicant’s temporary immigration permission. It also held that licensing authorities may consider an adverse immigration finding when assessing an applicant’s character.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Garrett Simons on 25 April 2022, concerned a Bangladeshi citizen’s challenge to two licensing decisions. The court found the December 2019 decision to grant him a licence only until April 2020 was invalid. However, it upheld the May 2020 refusal to renew his licence, because immigration authorities had made an adverse finding against him in a separate process.
The applicant had held a residence card as the family member of an EU citizen. After their divorce, he applied to retain residence rights. That application was refused in May 2019, and the refusal was upheld on review in March 2021. While the review was pending, he received temporary permissions allowing him to live and work in Ireland.
He applied for an SPSV driver’s licence in March 2019. Garda authorities first proposed refusing it because he had no immigration permission, but after he provided evidence of temporary permission, issued a licence in December 2019 that expired in April 2020. When he applied to renew it, the authorities proposed refusal because his immigration status had not been regularised and his permission was temporary. They refused the renewal on those grounds in May 2020.
The court said the governing 2015 regulations set a five-year licence term. The licensing authority could instead make continued production of renewed immigration permission a licence condition and revoke the licence if that condition was not met. It could also consider whether an applicant required and held current immigration permission.
In this case, the court held that the first-instance immigration decision contained an adverse finding of serious dishonesty. That finding was relevant to the statutory assessment of “good character” even while a review was pending. The authority could therefore rely on it when refusing renewal. The judge stressed that the refusal was lawful because of that adverse finding; temporary permission alone would not have justified refusal.
The judgment also expressed serious reservations about a policy that would generally reject applicants who held temporary permission while awaiting a decision on an EU-related residence-card application. The judge said no objective justification had been given for such a policy and that the issue could raise questions under EU law. It did not arise for decision on these facts, and the court did not refer a question to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The court did not make final orders. Because the later immigration review had upheld the refusal of residence rights, the judge said a remittal for reconsideration might be pointless, but noted that separate proceedings could have affected that decision. The case was listed for final orders on 16 May 2022.