The High Court granted a family leave to seek judicial review of deportation orders on two limited grounds: a possible error in the Minister’s assessment of the parents’ employment prospects and a possible failure to serve notice properly in relation to one child. The court stayed the deportation orders until the proceedings are determined.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on 21 November 2016, concerned two parents and two minor children. The children’s names are anonymised in the judgment. The father arrived in Ireland in 2003 without permission and the mother in 2009. Their children were born in 2011 and 2016. The parents had been running a Chinese restaurant as self-employed workers since May 2015, and told the Minister about this in January 2016.
The applicants sought leave to challenge deportation orders notified by letters dated 25 July 2016. At this leave stage, the court applied the statutory substantial-grounds test. It rejected their proposed challenges to the Minister’s findings on character, the family’s presence without permission, the common good, and the legality of deporting the children. The judge said the Minister could treat unlawful residence and work as relevant to the parents’ character, and was not required to consider residence permission for the children separately or before deciding on deportation.
The judge found that substantial grounds could exist to argue that the Minister’s assessment overlooked the parents’ current self-employment when concluding their employment prospects were limited. Whether that error would prove significant remained unresolved.
A separate issue concerned service of the notice of intention to deport the third named applicant, a child. Submissions had given two different addresses in Sligo, at 17 Market Court and 14 Market Court. The court said service on a parent who is the child’s guardian can amount to service on the child. Given the apparent address confusion and the applicants’ apparent lack of awareness of the deportation proposal concerning that child, the judge found substantial grounds to argue that service had not been duly effected.
The court granted leave only on the specified grounds in the statement of grounds, refused leave on the remaining grounds, stayed the deportation orders pending the High Court proceedings, and reserved costs. It did not determine the underlying judicial review challenges.