The High Court refused an application for leave to seek judicial review of a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing a Cameroonian applicant refugee status. The court accepted the applicant’s explanation for starting the proceedings seven days late, but concluded that the proposed challenge would require it to reassess the facts as an appeal court.
The applicant had arrived in Ireland in April 2004, aged 17, and applied for refugee status. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal heard her appeal on 4 October 2004 and issued its decision on 16 November. She sought to quash a decision dated 30 November 2004, and also requested declarations, an injunction and other relief.
Her grounds included claims that the tribunal had mishandled country information, failed to consider whether she faced persecution because of an imputed political opinion or her Bamileke ethnicity, and made unreasonable credibility findings. She also argued that the tribunal had not given proper weight to psychological evidence and the effects of rape, or sufficiently applied principles for assessing an unaccompanied minor’s claim.
The court considered five points advanced at the leave hearing. On the applicant’s age, it said refugee decision-making should be sensitive to a child’s age, but considered that someone approaching 18 could be expected to bear the normal burden of proof under the Refugee Act. The court also rejected criticism of the tribunal for not considering a later psychologist’s report: it had been sent after the tribunal’s decision and could not have been included.
On credibility, the court said the tribunal’s concerns about the lack of country information on employees of activists being targeted, the absence of a trace of the alleged arrest of the applicant’s employer, and aspects of how the authorities were said to have located and apprehended the applicant appeared rational. It said setting those findings aside would require the High Court to act as an appeal body, which judicial review does not permit.
The court distinguished this case from one involving undisclosed country information. It said the issue was the applicant’s assertion that relevant information could not be found, and that the general description of sources consulted was sufficient to alert her to the problem. In the absence of contradictory information from the applicant’s side, the court said it was difficult to criticise the tribunal for proceeding on the basis that such information did not exist.
The court rejected the argument that the O’Keeffe test was inappropriate, finding that substituting another test was unlikely to change the outcome. It found no error in principle and refused leave. It did not grant the requested judicial review relief or decide the underlying refugee claim afresh.