The High Court has quashed a decision refusing naturalisation to a child born in Ireland after finding that the Minister had wrongly treated her father’s good character as a condition of her application.
The judicial review concerned a decision dated 7 December 2016. The Minister had refused the child’s application because the father, who submitted it on her behalf, did not satisfy the Minister that he was of good character. The father’s own naturalisation application was also refused, but that decision was not the one challenged in this judicial review.
The child’s mother said the father had been violent towards her and had physically assaulted her in July 2013, causing her to flee with the child to a women’s refuge. The mother later obtained a barring order. The judgment records that the father has court-ordered access to the child and pays court-ordered maintenance. These matters formed part of the background; the court’s decision turned on the interpretation of the naturalisation legislation.
The dispute concerned section 15 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956. For applications by minors, section 15(3) defines “applicant” as the parent, guardian or person acting in loco parentis. The Minister argued that this meant the adult applying had to satisfy the naturalisation conditions, including good character. The child argued that the adult’s role was to make the application, while the child remained the person who had to meet the conditions.
Mr Justice David Keane found the provision ambiguous. He interpreted it to mean that the adult is the applicant in the procedural sense, but the minor is the applicant who must satisfy the naturalisation conditions. He said the Minister therefore erred in law by making the father’s good character a condition of the child’s application.
The court ordered certiorari, quashing the Minister’s 7 December 2016 decision refusing the child a certificate of naturalisation. It did not grant the declarations sought on constitutional or European Convention grounds, finding it unnecessary to consider them. The judgment does not itself grant the child a certificate of naturalisation.