The Supreme Court dismissed two appeals by the Minister for Justice and Equality concerning refusals to revoke deportation orders after the affected non-national applicants married Irish citizens. The judgment, delivered by O’Donnell J. on 23 September 2020, agreed that the Minister’s decisions had treated the constitutional analysis as identical to, and possibly derivative of, the European Convention on Human Rights analysis. The court upheld the Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the constitutional rights and interests had not been properly addressed.
The first appeal concerned I. Gorry, a Nigerian woman whose asylum application had failed and against whom a deportation order was made in June 2005. She remained in Ireland and evaded deportation. She met an Irish citizen, Joseph Gorry, in 2006; they married in Nigeria in 2009 and sought revocation of the order and a visa for her to enter Ireland. A later revocation application was refused. Mr. Gorry said that a heart attack and medical advice made travel to, or residence in, Nigeria particularly difficult. The High Court quashed the Minister’s decision, and the Court of Appeal upheld that result.
The second appeal concerned A.B.M., a Nigerian national who arrived in Ireland in 2006, unsuccessfully sought asylum and/or subsidiary protection, and was made subject to a deportation order in June 2008. He evaded deportation for seven years. He applied for revocation in early 2014. In February 2015 he married B.A., who had become an Irish citizen in August 2013. The Minister refused revocation on 20 July 2015, after being informed that B.A. was pregnant. The High Court dismissed the challenge, but the Court of Appeal allowed it on the basis that the Minister had failed to identify and weigh the constitutional interests correctly.
O’Donnell J. agreed that both Ministerial decisions should be quashed, while differing from McKechnie J. on the constitutional route to that result. He said the Constitution requires decision-makers to consider the right of an Irish citizen to reside in Ireland and marry, the State’s obligation to guard the institution of marriage, and the effects of deportation on a couple’s ability to live together. Marriage alone, he said, does not create an automatic right for a non-national spouse to enter or remain in Ireland. The Minister must give substantial weight to credible evidence that deportation prevents cohabitation in Ireland and makes living together elsewhere difficult or impossible, while considering the full circumstances.
The judgment also makes clear that refusal to revoke an order is not invalid merely because it affects a couple’s wish to live together in Ireland. The Minister retains discretion to revoke an order on humanitarian grounds, and any decision remains subject to judicial review. The appeals were dismissed; the judgment did not itself revoke either deportation order or grant permission to enter Ireland.