The High Court has dismissed a Pakistani family’s judicial review challenge to deportation orders and released the State from an undertaking not to enforce them.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ruled on 29 January 2019 that the applicants had not shown grounds to set aside the orders. The case concerned the father, mother and three children, including two minors who sued through their father. The family was to be returned to Pakistan together.
The parents arrived in Ireland on visitor visas on 30 July 2009 and overstayed. Their residency applications were refused in May 2016. After submissions seeking leave to remain, the Minister proposed deportation in June 2018 and the family was notified in August that deportation orders had been made. The High Court granted leave to bring the present proceedings in September 2018.
The applicants argued, among other things, that the decisions had disproportionate effects on the children and failed to properly address their best interests. The judge said the children’s rights had been considered through Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. He found the Minister knew their ages and that it was not unreasonable to consider an eight-year-old adaptable. The family’s unsettled immigration status meant exceptional circumstances were needed to justify quashing the decisions; the judge found those circumstances had not been established.
The judge also rejected challenges to the Minister’s assessment of the parents’ work prospects. The father relied on an accountant job offer that lacked a salary, details of the signatory’s position and other particulars; the stated placement was in Fermoy, while he lived in Portlaoise. The mother produced letters about possible teaching work, but these lacked salary information and other details about the work. The judge held that the Minister could reasonably regard the offers as not credible and the parents’ employment prospects as limited. He also found no obligation on the Minister to ask the applicants to strengthen the material they had submitted.
The court dismissed the proceedings and released the respondents from their undertaking not to enforce the deportation orders. The ruling addressed the judicial review challenge; it did not itself make new deportation orders.