The High Court has quashed a decision refusing to revoke a deportation order against a father, finding that the Minister for Justice failed to assess the consequences for his family as a unit when granting the mother permission to remain in Ireland.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ordered the father’s application to be reconsidered. An injunction preventing his deportation will continue until that review is lawfully completed. The court did not itself grant him permission to remain.
The applicants were identified in the judgment only by initials. The first applicant, a man from Cameroon, had received a deportation order in 2006. The second applicant, a woman from Morocco, was granted permission to remain in 2013. They have a child, the third applicant. The judgment said the parents had held a religious marriage ceremony that was not legally recognised.
The father’s latest application to revoke the deportation order was refused on 23 February 2015. He brought the present judicial review proceedings on 4 March 2015, challenging that refusal. The court allowed an amendment to the pleadings to particularise a discrimination claim, but refused a late application for discovery of material relating to an alleged ministerial policy of granting residence to long-term immigrants.
The judge rejected the argument that the Minister had unlawfully treated “insurmountable obstacles” to family relocation as a pass-or-fail test. He also found that the applicants had not established their claim that other long-term applicants had been granted residence under a policy: the evidence conflicted, and they had not pursued cross-examination to resolve it.
However, the court found irrational the Minister’s assessment that the father’s employment prospects were poor, given evidence of his professional abilities. That error alone did not justify quashing the decision because it did not go to its core.
The decisive issue was that the Minister had considered the mother’s permission to remain separately from the father’s case, despite knowing about the parents and their child. The judge held that the family should have been assessed collectively and that no compelling justification had been shown for allowing one parent to stay while requiring the other to leave. He found the approach irrational, discriminatory and contrary to the applicants’ rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution.
The court quashed the 2015 refusal, sent the revocation application back for fresh consideration in accordance with the judgment, and continued the injunction against deportation while that process is pending. It adjourned consequential applications to a date to be fixed.