The Court of Appeal has dismissed most of two appeals by naturalised Irish citizens who sought to use refugee family reunification rights to bring relatives to Ireland. It held that acquiring Irish citizenship ends refugee status under the Refugees Act 1996, so the appellants’ declarations no longer supported applications under that Act.
The appeals concerned section 18 of the 1996 Act. The court said an applicant must both be a refugee within the Act’s definition and hold a refugee declaration that remains in force. It concluded that a person who becomes an Irish citizen cannot meet the first condition, and that the declaration ceases to have effect by operation of law without a separate revocation decision.
The lead appellant, M. A. M., was granted refugee status in 2008 and became an Irish citizen in 2013. After re-establishing contact with her husband in 2016, she applied in April 2017 to bring him to Ireland. The Minister refused the application, first in May 2017 and again in October, on the basis that her citizenship meant she was no longer eligible to apply under the family reunification provisions.
K. N., the first appellant in the other case, received refugee status in 2009 and became an Irish citizen in 2012. In 2016 she applied to bring her adult daughter and two grandchildren from Uzbekistan. The Minister rejected the application in November 2017 because K. N. had become an Irish citizen. Her application concerning her son-in-law had been withdrawn.
The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s central conclusion that the 1996 Act did not allow either appellant to apply under section 18 after naturalisation. It rejected arguments that EU law required an express revocation, or that constitutional and human rights considerations changed the meaning of the statutory conditions. The court said family rights could be considered in applications under immigration law, while making no decision on any such application here.
The court did, however, set aside the High Court order on one point in M. A. M.’s case. It held she was entitled to succeed on her challenge concerning whether section 47(9) of the International Protection Act 2015 applied retrospectively. The Minister had accepted that the provision did not apply to people who became citizens before that Act came into force, but the court found the Minister’s correspondence had lacked clarity. The appeals were otherwise dismissed.