The High Court has refused a mother and child’s application to quash deportation orders, ruling that their challenge was brought outside the statutory 28-day limit and that no sufficient reason had been given for the delay.
In a judgment delivered on 14 May 2024, Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty said the deportation orders had been issued in May 2023, while the judicial review application was not made until August. The court held that the 28-day time limit applied and would not extend it. The judge also noted that the application was late under the three-month limit in the Rules of the Superior Courts.
The applicants argued that the reasons for the orders were unclear and that the Minister for Justice should have issued a separate written decision explaining how updated country of origin information had been considered. The judge rejected that argument, finding no statutory requirement for a separate written decision under section 50 of the International Protection Act 2015 in the circumstances of this case.
The updated information had been sent to the Minister in May 2022, after the applicants were refused refugee status. It covered political events and other matters that might have been relevant if the mother’s account had been accepted. But the International Protection Office and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal had rejected her account of political persecution and the disappearance of her fiancé and sons because of inconsistencies. Her claim of gender-based persecution had also been rejected. Those earlier findings were not under review in this case.
The judge said the new information could not change those findings and was not relevant to the applicants’ circumstances as assessed in the earlier decisions. She found that the Minister had considered the material, referring to an affidavit from a departmental official that the applicants had not challenged. The deportation orders, read with the earlier decisions, made clear why the applicants were to be deported, the judge said.
The applicants also submitted that deportation breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judge did not consider that argument because it had not been pleaded in the judicial review grounds and no application had been made to amend them.
The application was refused primarily because it was out of time. The court also ordered the applicants to pay the respondent’s costs.