The High Court refused an interlocutory injunction to prevent the deportation of an anonymised mother and her young son while the Minister for Justice considered their second application to revoke deportation orders. It also refused them leave to apply for judicial review of the Minister’s refusal to give an undertaking that they would not be removed in the meantime.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice McDermott on 6 December 2013, concerned the Minister’s letter of 25 October 2013. The Minister had said the second application under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999 did not suspend the deportation orders. The court was not deciding that application: the Minister had not yet determined it.
The mother and child arrived in Ireland in June 2008. Their asylum and subsidiary protection applications were refused, and deportation orders were made in September 2011. A first application to revoke the orders, made in August 2012, was refused in June 2013. Neither the deportation orders nor that refusal had been challenged in court. The second revocation application, made in August 2013, relied chiefly on claimed private-life rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, developed during their time in Ireland, and repeated country information about conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The applicants argued that removal before the Minister’s decision could undermine an effective remedy. They also relied on the child’s age, time in Ireland, schooling, and alleged risks on return. The court considered the procedural history and the material previously submitted. It found no new facts about the applicants’ private lives in the second application, and said most of the country information was the same as before. The additional legal argument about Article 8 could have been raised earlier, the judge said.
Applying principles from earlier Supreme Court decisions, the judge found the applicants had not shown a fair issue to be tried or arguable grounds to challenge the refusal of the undertaking. He also concluded that, even if such an issue had been shown, the balance of convenience did not favour an injunction. The prior deportation decisions remained unchallenged, and the court found no new evidence of particular risk or irreparable harm beyond matters already considered. It weighed the child’s age, schooling and time in Ireland against the absence of new facts and the weakness it saw in the case for revocation.
The court refused both the interlocutory injunction and leave to apply for judicial review. The ruling did not determine the pending second revocation application or itself make a new deportation order; it left the existing orders in place without an injunction suspending their enforcement.