The High Court refused L. H.’s application for leave to seek judicial review of the Minister’s 2008 refusal to let him make a second asylum application. The court held that the proposed challenge raised no substantial ground for finding the refusal unlawful. It did not decide a new asylum claim or make a deportation order in this proceeding.
L. H., a Georgian national, arrived in Ireland in January 2001 and applied for refugee status. After moving from accommodation in Wexford to Dublin, he did not notify the Refugee Applications Commissioner of his change of address and missed two interview appointments. The court said the letters summoning him were returned marked “Gone Away”. His application was treated as withdrawn, and the Minister refused refugee status in June 2002. A deportation order followed in September 2002.
In 2008, after being detained at Cloverhill Prison, L. H. sought consent to apply again under section 17(7) of the Refugee Act 1996. His solicitor said he had moved to Dublin because he needed medical treatment and could not travel to hospital from the Wexford accommodation. The proposed asylum claim was that local militia in Georgia had pressured him to fight in the war against Russia because his mother was Chechen, and that he feared imprisonment or torture if returned. The judgment records that this claim was identical to the one made in 2001.
The Minister refused consent after an official concluded that no new convincing evidence had been supplied. L. H. argued that his original claim had never been substantively assessed and that the Minister had applied the wrong test. He also relied on non-refoulement protections and European asylum law. The court considered competing approaches in earlier cases, including whether a subsequent application must present a sufficiently different claim and whether new material could reasonably have been raised earlier.
The court said the material submitted with the 2008 request presented no new claim or evidence. It noted that L. H.’s statement described later events, including the bombing of his family home, but found this to be additional support for the original claim rather than a new claim. It also said the original application had been deemed withdrawn because of L. H.’s failure to notify the authorities of his move and attend interviews.
The judgment discussed amendments to the asylum law that came into force in 2011, after the challenged decision. The court referred to those provisions to compare legal tests, not to apply them retroactively or to decide that the EU directive had direct effect in this case. It concluded that the Minister’s obligation to consider non-refoulement remained applicable up to any removal, but that the issue before it was whether the proposed further application offered new material for assessment. Leave to apply for judicial review was refused.