The High Court has allowed an anonymised applicant to amend her judicial review proceedings concerning an International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) decision. The court ruled only on whether she could add a new declaration and two legal grounds; it did not decide the substance of her challenge to the IPAT decision.
The applicant, identified as E.A. in the judgment, was granted leave to seek judicial review in February 2024. She seeks to quash an IPAT decision affirming an earlier adverse ruling on her international protection application. She claims to have been trafficked from Nigeria to Ireland via the UK and says the tribunal’s assessment of her credibility was flawed. Those are claims in the underlying proceedings, not findings made in this ruling.
The proposed amendments include a declaration that excluding an asylum applicant from identification as a trafficking victim because she is in the asylum system is unlawful under EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights. The new grounds also challenge how IPAT dealt with information from Ruhama, which assessed the applicant as having “many of the indicators of” a trafficking victim, and the alleged effect of the State’s administrative arrangements on formal identification and access to protections. The applicant also alleges that authorities failed to refer her to An Garda Síochána’s anti-trafficking section.
The respondents opposed the amendment. Their papers defended the process before IPAT and disputed the applicant’s entitlement to relief. The judgment says the State’s evidence described routes available to a person who believed they were trafficked, including applying for international protection or contacting the Garda unit dealing with human trafficking.
The court applied criteria including whether the new points were arguable, whether there was an adequate explanation for not raising them earlier, and whether the respondents would suffer unfair or irremediable prejudice. It found the grounds arguable and accepted the explanation that they had been omitted through error by the applicant’s lawyers. It also found the likely extra work and cost for the respondents to be logistical prejudice: no trial date had been set aside, and no unavailable witnesses or other unfairness had been identified.
The court therefore permitted the amendments. It gave a provisional view that the respondents should receive the costs of the amendment application, with that costs order stayed until the proceedings are determined. The matter was listed for further argument on the costs formulation and directions about consequential pleadings on 30 January 2025. The judgment records no final decision on costs or on the underlying judicial review.