The High Court has refused to allow an Armenian woman to continue a judicial review challenge over the Refugee Appeals Tribunal's refusal to accept an asylum appeal lodged years outside the statutory deadline.
Mr Justice Birmingham delivered judgment on June 4, 2010. The applicant, identified as L.S., had lived in Chechnya with her Chechen husband before arriving in Ireland in 2000 and seeking asylum.
Her claim was closely linked to her husband's. She said he had been seriously assaulted because he refused to join Chechen forces fighting Russia and that threats had also been made that she would be raped.
The Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner recommended refusing her asylum claim in November 2001. L.S. registered with the Refugee Legal Service and was assigned a private solicitor. An appeal had to be filed by December 13, 2001, but the solicitor failed to do so. Birmingham J said the missed deadline was not L.S.'s fault and described her case for a late appeal at that stage as compelling.
A late appeal submitted in January 2002 was rejected. The judgment records that the solicitor subsequently became difficult for both L.S. and the Refugee Legal Service to contact and was later removed from its private practitioner panel.
However, the court found that L.S. also allowed the situation to drift. She and her husband left Ireland in November 2002 while trying to locate their daughter and remained abroad until Dutch authorities returned her to Ireland under the Dublin Regulation in May 2006.
In 2007 the Refugee Appeals Tribunal again refused to accept the late appeal. It later explained that the decision reflected the six-year delay and L.S.'s failure to participate actively in the asylum process during part of that period.
Birmingham J held that this was a decision the tribunal was entitled to reach. He also rejected a separate attempt to require the Minister to permit a fresh asylum application.
Although the tribunal's initial refusal to provide reasons was regrettable, the judge held that reasons supplied after proceedings began did not provide an arguable basis for invalidating the decision. The challenges were therefore not permitted to proceed.