The High Court has granted a minor leave to seek judicial review of a deportation order, finding that the proposed challenge met the threshold for proceeding. The court did not decide whether the order was lawful and expressed no view on the substantive arguments.
The applicant, identified as H.O., was born in Ireland in April 2007. Her mother, P.I., is from Nigeria and applied for asylum in 2005. H.O.’s mother lodged an asylum application and a request to include her daughter in the procedure in July 2007, before a Refugee Appeals Tribunal hearing concerning the family’s applications.
The Tribunal rejected an appeal in September 2008, and the Minister for Justice made a deportation order for H.O. on 12 March 2009. The original judicial review papers sought challenges to several decisions affecting the family. At the hearing, however, the other applicants withdrew their applications, leaving only H.O.’s proposed challenge to the deportation order and to the Tribunal decision insofar as it purported to cover her.
The court refused to extend time to challenge the Tribunal decision. It said the evidence did not explain why that challenge had not been brought within the relevant period. The affidavit described steps taken after the Minister’s deportation proposal, including applications for leave to remain and subsidiary protection, but did not give a full account of what happened after the Tribunal decision was received in October 2008. The judge said H.O.’s age did not remove the requirement to show good and sufficient reason for the delay.
The court did extend time by five days for the proposed challenge to the deportation order and granted leave to seek an order quashing it. The single permitted ground is that the Minister lacked power to deport H.O. because, it is argued, her asylum claim had not been investigated by the Refugee Applications Commissioner or covered by a Section 13 report and recommendation.
The judge said that issue was sufficiently arguable to be examined at a substantive hearing. The respondents’ arguments—including whether the challenge would indirectly attack the Tribunal decision and whether the Tribunal’s jurisdiction could have been enlarged by consent—remain unresolved. The court extended time until 20 April 2009. The order grants permission to pursue the challenge; it does not quash the deportation order.