The High Court dismissed a judicial review challenging deportation orders and refusals of subsidiary protection for a Nigerian woman and her infant daughter, who had since been deported. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys gave judgment on 24 April 2018.
The first applicant sought asylum in August 2009. Her daughter was born in Ireland on 22 October that year and was later included in the asylum claim. The asylum application was refused in May 2010. A proposal to deport followed in July 2010, and applications for subsidiary protection and leave to remain were made. Subsidiary protection was refused on 26 July 2012, and a deportation order was made on 30 August 2012. The judicial review proceedings began on 1 October 2012. The applicants were subsequently deported.
The applicants sought to have the deportation orders and subsidiary protection refusals quashed. The judgment records that the court had granted leave to proceed on amended grounds in October 2017. At the hearing, counsel pursued fact-specific grounds including alleged excessive reliance on the asylum refusal, alleged deference to tribunal findings, failure to make inquiries and irrationality in assessing protection in Nigeria. Other legal grounds had been rejected in earlier High Court decisions.
On the asylum-refusal ground, the judge noted that the subsidiary protection application referred to the applicant’s file for details of her claim. He said the Minister was entitled to take account of the credibility findings made in the asylum process and found no illegality on that basis.
The court said it had not been established that the Minister considered himself bound by the tribunal. Having regard to tribunal findings, the judge said, was not the same as treating them as binding. On inquiries, the judgment noted that none had been requested and that the applicants had not specified what inquiries should have been made. The court found no unlawfulness established on that ground.
The applicants also alleged that the Minister had failed to consider the effectiveness of laws and state protection in Nigeria. The judge described the decision as detailed and comprehensive and held that it was within the range of rational conclusions available to the Minister. The court dismissed the application. The judgment does not set out any further order.