The High Court has refused an applicant leave to seek judicial review of the Minister for Justice’s refusal to revisit an earlier subsidiary protection decision or allow a fresh application.
In an ex parte application, Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh held that the applicant had not established an arguable legal error in the decisions made in response to his solicitors’ December 2013 letter. The ruling, delivered on 21 January 2014, concerned permission to bring a judicial review challenge; it did not determine a fresh subsidiary protection claim.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as B.M. and said to be a Cameroonian national, had been refused asylum in 2008 and subsidiary protection in March 2012. A Deportation Order had also issued. His solicitors asked the Department to revoke the subsidiary protection refusal and permit a new application, citing legal arguments and more recent country information. They said the letter was a request for permission, not itself a fresh application.
The Department treated the correspondence as an application to revoke the Deportation Order under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999. It said the protection decision had already been determined and had not been challenged at the time, and stated it would not revisit it. The judge interpreted that response as refusing both revocation of the subsidiary protection decision and permission for a fresh application. He said the Department’s stated reasons included the unexplained delay and the absence of an earlier challenge.
The applicant argued, among other grounds, that the Department had unlawfully treated a prior refusal as preventing a further application, failed to consider new material, and breached non-refoulement obligations. The judge rejected those arguments at the leave stage. He found the refusal was not based on a general prohibition on making a further application, and said the Department was not required to assess the new material after deciding not to engage with the merits. He also rejected the argument that EU equivalence principles required a similar route to re-enter the asylum process.
The non-refoulement ground was rejected because the revocation request concerning the Deportation Order was still being considered. The judgment said any question of refoulement would be dealt with in that process, about which the applicant had made no complaint.
The court refused leave to seek judicial review. It did not decide the pending Deportation Order revocation request. The judgment described that request as under active consideration by state officials.