The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting a Pakistani mother and daughter’s asylum appeal, finding that the paper-only process did not meet the requirements of fairness and natural justice.
In a judgment delivered on 6 March 2015, Ms Justice Faherty granted leave to seek judicial review and ordered the appeal remitted to a different Tribunal member. The appeal remains a papers-only appeal. The court did not decide whether the applicants were credible or whether they should receive refugee status.
The mother said she feared persecution in Pakistan after abandoning Islam and described abuse by her husband and his family. She also said a fatwa had been issued against her. The Refugee Applications Commissioner rejected her credibility, recommended against refugee status and found that she had failed without reasonable cause to apply for asylum as soon as reasonably practicable after arriving in Ireland. That finding meant the Tribunal appeal proceeded without an oral hearing. The Commissioner’s finding was not challenged in these judicial review proceedings.
The Tribunal rejected the appeal on credibility grounds. Among other matters, it relied on entries in the mother’s passport which it considered evidence that she had travelled to Saudi Arabia on an Umra visa. The Tribunal member referred to his own experience of applying for a Saudi visa and travelling there. The High Court said the mother should have had a further opportunity to address that experience before it was relied on in rejecting her explanation.
The Tribunal also concluded that the mother had “effectively abducted her child” and speculated that her husband would not have allowed the child to leave Pakistan undetected. The High Court found that these concerns had not been put to her and should have been raised before being used to undermine her credibility.
Justice Faherty also found that the Tribunal should have considered a letter from the mother’s brother about the delay in seeking asylum and should have addressed the country-of-origin information submitted with the appeal. The court said the statement that the Tribunal had considered that information did not explain how it had been treated.
The judgment stressed that the judicial review court was not deciding the mother’s credibility. It concluded that the Tribunal had failed to exercise the “extreme care” required for a papers-only appeal and that substantial grounds justified quashing its decision of 2 September 2010. The appeal was remitted for fresh consideration by a different Tribunal member, still without an oral hearing.