The High Court has rejected a Zimbabwean man's challenge to the Minister for Justice's refusal to grant him permission to remain in Ireland, finding that the review of his case properly considered humanitarian factors separately from his European Convention on Human Rights claims.
Mr Justice Conleth Bradley said the section 49 review carried out in October 2024 showed substantive engagement with the applicant's circumstances, including his employment, community and church involvement, volunteering, medical evidence and time in the State. The applicant had argued that the decision suffered from the same defects identified in an earlier High Court case, A (Albania), where a refusal was quashed because the decision-maker had largely summarised submissions without properly assessing them.
The applicant arrived in Ireland from South Africa on 30 May 2022 and applied for international protection the following day. The International Protection Office later recommended that he receive neither refugee status nor subsidiary protection, citing credibility concerns, and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal upheld that decision in September 2023.
During the appeal, the applicant submitted a SPIRASI medico-legal report which found his physical and psychological symptoms were highly consistent with his account of torture. The tribunal accepted that he had suffered injuries and psychological effects, but said the report could not establish who caused the trauma or in what circumstances and maintained its adverse credibility finding.
The Minister later reviewed, and affirmed, an earlier refusal of permission to remain under section 49 of the International Protection Act 2015. Bradley J found that, unlike the decisions criticised in A (Albania) and HK (Western Sahara), the review expressly recognised that humanitarian considerations could arise even where Articles 3 and 8 ECHR thresholds were not met, and separately assessed those matters.
The court therefore held the October 2024 decision lawful and said the judicial review reliefs would be refused. The case was listed for 25 November 2025 to address ancillary matters, including costs, with the judge indicating provisionally that the Minister was presumptively entitled to recover measured legal costs.