The High Court refused leave for S.M. (Pakistan) to challenge a decision refusing to readmit her to Ireland’s refugee status determination process. The court did not decide whether she qualified for refugee status, and did not quash the refusal. The application combined a request for leave to seek judicial review with a request for certiorari.
S.M. said she was an Ahmadi Muslim who had faced persecution in Pakistan. Her initial Irish asylum application was determined after she did not attend a scheduled interview. She later sought readmission under section 17(7) of the Refugee Act 1996. The Minister’s decision unit refused that request on 26 May 2014, and she was notified on 27 June.
The Minister and Attorney General argued that the judicial review was premature because S.M. had not used an internal departmental review process. Justice Stewart rejected that argument. Citing earlier High Court decisions, she held that S.M. could choose judicial review without first seeking an internal review.
The court then considered the information given to the decision unit. A solicitor’s letter of 26 March 2014 set out legal arguments and said factual representations would follow. The judge found that the promised further letter had apparently not been sent. She said the letter was “singularly lacking in relation to factual matters”.
S.M.’s court affidavit gave detailed explanations of her movements and circumstances, including her claim that evidence of her Ahmadi faith had not been available during her first asylum application. The judge said the court was not deciding the accuracy of that evidence on judicial review. But she found no explanation for why the factual material in the affidavit had not been provided to the decision unit after the March letter.
The judgment also referred to the statutory test for a subsequent asylum application: new elements must make refugee status significantly more likely, and the applicant must have been unable, through no fault of her own, to present them earlier. The judge considered that proof of S.M.’s faith could have been obtained and provided earlier. She further noted that judicial review was discretionary and concluded that S.M. had not met her responsibilities as an asylum applicant. Leave was refused.