The High Court dismissed a Zimbabwean applicant’s judicial review challenge to the refusal to provide notes of his international protection interview before the International Protection Office (IPO) issued its report.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ruled on 10 May 2018 that neither national law nor the EU provisions relied on required the IPO to give the applicant the notes at that stage. The case concerned access before the report and any later appeal; the judgment did not decide whether interview notes could be accessed later.
The applicant arrived in Ireland in April 2016 and applied for asylum. After his application was refused and he appealed, transitional provisions under the International Protection Act 2015 treated him as having applied for international protection. He was interviewed by the IPO in September 2017.
His solicitor sought access to the interview record to make submissions before the IPO prepared its report. The IPO refused, saying it had no statutory obligation to provide notes in advance of a recommendation. The applicant began judicial review proceedings in December 2017, and an injunction prevented the IPO from finalising its recommendation while the case was pending.
The court said the Act allowed the IPO to consider representations made after an interview but did not create a right to make them. It also held that refusing to provide the notes was not, by itself, a breach of the right to fair procedures. The judge noted that the applicant could have brought a solicitor to take notes at the interview, and that he had not sought permission to record it.
The applicant also argued that the EU duty to cooperate in assessing protection claims required access to the interview notes. The judge rejected that argument, relying on a Court of Justice of the European Union ruling that cooperation did not require authorities to supply decision materials and invite observations. He also concluded that the Charter right to good administration did not require immediate access to a national authority’s file at this point in the process.
The judgment noted that the rules provide for access to interview reports after a decision in some circumstances, to allow an appeal to be prepared. It did not rule on a hypothetical challenge to a prohibition on recording interviews, which the judge said was not before him.
The court dismissed the proceedings. It also held that the EU-law issues did not warrant a reference to the Court of Justice, while the national-law point had already been determined by the Supreme Court in an earlier case.