The High Court has dismissed a Zimbabwean man’s judicial review challenge to a deportation order, finding that the Minister for Justice had acted lawfully in assessing his health, family and humanitarian circumstances.
In a judgment delivered on 30 January 2018, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the applicant had not provided sufficiently detailed or objective evidence to show that the Minister’s decision was unlawful. The court dismissed the proceedings; it did not make a fresh deportation decision.
The anonymised applicant, identified as V.D., entered Ireland unlawfully on 3 November 2013 and sought asylum. His application and appeal were rejected. He did not apply for subsidiary protection. A deportation order was made on 8 May 2016. The High Court had granted leave to seek judicial review and an injunction restraining deportation in July 2016.
V.D. said he had been assaulted while working illegally in South Africa and had developed epilepsy, memory loss, poor judgment and seizures. He said he needed continuing care, medication and rehabilitation. He relied in part on a general practitioner’s report warning of risks to his health and safety if returned to Zimbabwe. The judge criticised the report as generalised and unsupported by objective knowledge of conditions there. No expert report was provided despite a referral to neurology, and the court said details of the applicant’s cognitive impairment and care needs had not been supplied.
The applicant’s mother and three children were in Ireland; the judgment says one family member was an Irish citizen and the others had permission to be in the State. He also had a brother in Zimbabwe. The judge said the evidence about the applicant’s dependence on his mother was vague and did not specify what care he required. The court accepted that the Minister could find the evidence insufficient to establish a family-life claim requiring a proportionality assessment under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The applicant’s barrister raised Article 3 during the hearing, but no draft amended grounds were provided and the judge said the issue had not been properly pleaded. The court also held that the evidence did not meet the threshold for requiring the State to dispel doubts about a possible Article 3 breach. The judgment noted that the relevant conclusions under Article 3 and other listed statutory provisions were not challenged in the private-life claim.
The court said assessment of humanitarian factors was for the Minister and found no basis to quash the deportation order. It dismissed the proceedings. The judgment does not state that the court itself ordered the applicant’s removal.