The High Court has refused an Iraqi applicant’s challenge to a decision affirming his transfer to the United Kingdom under the Dublin III Regulation. The court reviewed the appeal tribunal’s decision-making process; it did not make a fresh determination on whether the applicant should be transferred.
The applicant sought international protection in Ireland in April 2019 after applying in the UK the previous month. The International Protection Office asked the UK to take him back, and the UK agreed. The International Protection Appeals Tribunal affirmed the transfer decision in June 2020.
The applicant argued that the tribunal had not properly considered the implications of the UK’s planned departure from the European Union or his two cousins living in Ireland. He also sought a declaration that transfers to the UK would breach Article 3(2) of the Dublin III Regulation because of alleged systemic flaws, referring to the UK Internal Market Bill.
The court found that the tribunal was entitled to conclude, on the material before it, that the UK’s departure from the EU did not establish a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. The court said it could not consider new material about the applicant potentially being treated as an absconder and detained in the UK, because that material had not been put before the tribunal. The applicant had submitted it as part of his separate Article 17 application to the Minister.
On the family connection, the court held that the tribunal had correctly applied the Dublin rules. The applicant’s cousins were not protection applicants, and the relevant provisions concerning family members and dependent relatives did not apply to the circumstances described.
The court also refused the requested declaration concerning the Internal Market Bill. It said the Bill was not then law, concerned no asylum provisions, and did not establish that systemic flaws currently existed in the UK asylum procedure or reception conditions.
The Minister had indicated that she would decide the applicant’s Article 17 request by 16 December 2020. Because no decision had yet been made, the court said it could not review a refusal of that discretion. It also treated a separate challenge to the Minister’s transfer action as unavailable on the evidence before it. The court concluded that the question of transfer after the end of the Brexit transition period was premature, assuming no transfer steps were taken before the Article 17 decision.
The court refused the relief sought. It did not decide the pending Article 17 request or whether a transfer would occur.