The High Court dismissed two judicial review applications brought by an anonymised Jordanian applicant, one concerning his attempt to make a fresh asylum claim and the other challenging a deportation order. The court made the reporting restriction protecting his identity permanent.
The applicant had claimed that he was tortured in Jordan between 1993 and 1995 because of his religious opposition to the regime. He arrived in Ireland in 2000 with his wife and three children and applied for asylum. After an Irish-born child was born later that year, he sought residency on that basis and wrote that he wished to withdraw his asylum claim. The court found that the withdrawal took effect when the Minister accepted it on 23 February 2001.
In 2015, the applicant sought to re-enter the asylum process. The Minister refused consent under section 17(7) of the Refugee Act 1996, and the Refugee Applications Commissioner declined to accept a further application. The applicant argued that, because his original claim pre-dated the statutory asylum system, he could make a new application without consent. The court held that section 17(7), read purposively, required consent in his circumstances. It also found that his first judicial review was, in substance, an attempt to challenge the consent refusal, and dismissed it on procedural grounds including the failure to seek certiorari and to name the Commissioner as a respondent.
The Minister issued a deportation order on 30 November 2015. The applicant argued that his asylum history, a medical report from SPIRASI and the risk of ill-treatment if returned to Jordan made the order unlawful. The judge found that the purported fresh asylum application did not give the applicant a right to remain because it lacked the Minister’s consent. He also concluded that the Minister had considered the relevant submissions and applied the correct risk assessment. The applicant had not established a personal risk of ill-treatment or shown that he was likely to be identified in Jordan as belonging to a group systematically exposed to it. The judge held that the Minister’s assessment was not unreasonable or unlawful and dismissed the second judicial review.
The court adjourned both matters to allow any consequential application, including a possible application for leave to appeal. It ordered that the Court of Appeal’s interlocutory stay of deportation continue until the date fixed for a leave-to-appeal application, after which it would be discharged unless the High Court ordered otherwise. The judgment did not itself grant leave to appeal or finally determine any such application.