The High Court has quashed the Minister for Justice’s decision refusing a Pakistani man’s appeal for a long-stay visa to join his Irish citizen wife, finding that the decision failed to give due respect to their marriage. The court also ordered the Minister to pay the couple’s costs. It did not itself grant a visa.
In a judgment delivered on 10 December 2021, Ms Justice Tara Burns said the Minister had failed to identify a properly justified countervailing interest that outweighed the couple’s marital status and the wife’s constitutional rights. The case was a judicial review of the Minister’s appeal decision, not a fresh visa determination.
The couple have been married for more than 30 years. The husband lives in Pakistan; his wife, a naturalised Irish citizen born in Pakistan, lives in Ireland. They have three Irish citizen children, all of whom had reached adulthood by the time the challenge was heard. The couple and their children had lived apart since the wife came to Ireland with the children in 2005. The family travelled to Pakistan to visit the husband, and kept in daily contact by Skype.
The husband’s 2017 long-stay visa application was refused in May 2018. The couple appealed, but the appeal was rejected in January 2019. The Minister’s decision cited concerns that he could become a burden on State resources, the integrity of immigration controls, and a lack of documentary evidence about ongoing financial and social support for the children.
The court considered the Supreme Court’s ruling in *Gorry v Minister for Justice*, which held that marriage to an Irish citizen does not automatically give a non-national a right to enter or live in Ireland. However, the Minister must take account of the citizen spouse’s rights, the importance of marriage, and whether refusal would prevent or make cohabitation difficult or burdensome.
Justice Burns said the Minister had considered the wife’s Irish citizenship and the State’s interests, including immigration control and economic wellbeing. But the decision did not adequately assess the marriage’s length and durability, the couple’s sustained relationship despite separation, or the significance to their family life of refusing the husband entry. It also did not account for his earlier visa applications to visit his family, which had been refused in 2006 and 2011.
The court concluded that the Minister had not conducted the intensive consideration of the underlying facts and evidence required in the circumstances. It granted certiorari, quashing the appeal decision, and awarded the applicants their costs.