The High Court has refused a judicial review application by a woman from Mauritius who challenged the refusal to consider her application under a student permission extension scheme.
In a judgment delivered on 16 February 2017, Ms Justice O’Regan rejected her claims that the State had led her to expect that she qualified for the scheme and that officials had applied its rules too rigidly. The applicant had sought an order quashing the refusal and declarations that her application should have been considered under the scheme’s published criteria.
The scheme, launched in August 2012, ran for eight weeks and was open to qualifying students who had been residing in Ireland before 1 January 2005. The applicant arrived as a student in August 2006. She submitted an application form in March 2015 and received a refusal letter dated 15 September 2015. The letter said she had not received an extension under the scheme.
The applicant said she had received a two-year permission in October 2012 after completing a form at the immigration offices, and a further six-month permission in October 2014. She argued that the earlier permission implied she was covered by the scheme. She also said that, relying on the permissions, she had taken up employment with KSG Limited in June 2014.
The Minister for Justice and Equality disputed that she had applied under the scheme in 2012 or 2014. The respondent’s evidence was that she could not have met the scheme’s eligibility conditions: she had not been in Ireland before January 2005 and was not a student when she said she applied in October 2012. The judge found a conflict in the evidence and said the applicant had not established that she submitted a scheme form in 2012 or received a representation on that basis.
The judge also found that the applicant had not shown that she relied on an expectation under the scheme when taking up work. On her own account, her awareness of the scheme arose in spring 2015, after the 2012 permission had expired and after she had received the six-month permission in 2014. The court was also not satisfied that the applicant had made substantial representations about her position that officials refused to consider, as required for her challenge to the alleged inflexible policy.
The court refused both the application for certiorari and the declaration sought. The judgment does not grant the applicant permission under the scheme.