The High Court has refused an applicant leave to challenge the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s rejection of her refugee and subsidiary-protection claims, but granted leave to challenge the Minister for Justice’s process in refusing permission to remain in Ireland.
In a ruling delivered on 1 May 2025, Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan said the applicant had not shown substantial grounds to contest the tribunal’s adverse credibility findings. The court’s decision was at the leave stage of a judicial review application; it did not determine the eventual outcome of the permitted challenge to the Minister’s decision.
The applicant, anonymised in the ruling as P.F.A., said she had worked for a politician identified as Mr Y in South Africa. She claimed he was killed in July 2023, that her father was later killed after receiving threats concerning documents, and that she was kidnapped before fleeing the country. These were her claims, not findings made by the High Court.
The tribunal had rejected her protection appeal, relying on several credibility concerns. These included her response when shown a photograph that the tribunal had misidentified as her former employer, inconsistencies about documents said to have been given to her father, and discrepancies in dates concerning her alleged kidnapping and departure from South Africa.
Justice Phelan considered that some aspects of the tribunal’s reasoning about the documents were unclear or weakly explained. But she said the tribunal’s overall conclusion rested on multiple other credibility concerns, including the applicant’s failure to identify that the photograph showed someone other than the person she said she had worked for. She concluded that the weaknesses identified were not capable of undermining the other findings and refused leave to challenge the tribunal’s credibility assessment.
The court separately considered the Minister’s refusal of permission to remain under section 49 of the International Protection Act 2015. The applicant’s proposed challenge argued that the Minister had not properly engaged with further submissions concerning humanitarian considerations. The judge noted that the argument had not been developed with supporting legal authorities or a case-specific explanation, but said the Minister’s decision was similar to decisions in other cases where leave had been granted.
The court therefore granted leave on the ground that the Minister’s process may have involved inadequate consideration of the applicant’s submissions. It refused leave on the other grounds, apart from any consequential relief, such as costs, that may be appropriate. The ruling does not decide whether the Minister’s decision was unlawful or whether the applicant will ultimately receive permission to remain.