The High Court has refused Tiago da Silva Mascarenhas’s application to quash the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal of residence permission and proposal to deport him.
In a judgment delivered on 18 February 2020, Mr Justice Max Barrett said the court was “coerced as a matter of law” into refusing the reliefs sought. The case was a judicial review of decisions dated 26 March 2019. The court did not make a deportation order; it rejected the challenge to the Minister’s proposal to deport.
Mr Mascarenhas, a Brazilian national born in 1983, came to Ireland in 2006 and held a series of immigration permissions. He married an EU citizen in 2011 and received a five-year EU Treaty Rights permission. The Minister revoked that permission in 2018 after finding the marriage was one of convenience and involved false or misleading material. Mr Mascarenhas did not bring judicial review proceedings against the 2018 decisions, so that finding could not be challenged in this case.
The Minister had granted him a one-year Stamp 4 permission in June 2016 as an exceptional measure under national law. In March 2019, following reconsideration, the Minister refused a further right of residence and issued a deportation proposal. Mr Mascarenhas argued that the Minister had wrongly assessed his private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, including his residence history, work and business interests, friendships, and the effect of time spent in Ireland without permission.
The judge said the Minister had recognised that Article 8 rights arose from Mr Mascarenhas’s 13 years in Ireland, his economic activity and his friendships, and had considered the material submitted. The dispute was largely about the weight given to those matters, which the judge said was for the Minister to assess. The judgment also rejected arguments that the Minister had ignored the 2016 Stamp 4 permission or had failed to account for rights arising during periods of unlawful presence.
The court said the deportation proposal accurately stated that Mr Mascarenhas had no current permission and that his EU family-member application had been refused or revoked. Although he argued that the proposal should also have mentioned the later domestic-law permission, the judge found no practical basis to quash it on that ground.
The judgment noted that Mr Mascarenhas appeared to be a successful businessperson contributing to the State through his economic activity. That observation did not alter the court’s conclusion refusing the requested reliefs.