The High Court has quashed the Minister for Justice and Equality’s decision to refuse a refugee’s naturalisation application, finding that relevant information about a 2007 road traffic conviction was not brought to the Minister’s attention.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as G.K.N., was declared a refugee in 2002 and is married to an Irish citizen. He has two Irish citizen children. After three earlier unsuccessful applications, he applied again in September 2010. The Minister refused that application in July 2013, citing the “serious nature” of the offence.
The applicant’s solicitors had told officials that he grazed a parked vehicle, stopped and tried to find its owner, then left when nobody was nearby. The solicitors said he was later convicted of hit and run and leaving the scene, and paid fines totalling €300 and €700 compensation. The judgment records that the Garda report referred to two offences, a €300 fine for each, a two-month driving disqualification and €700 compensation.
The judge found, on the balance of probabilities, that the Minister’s decision was based on a short official submission and an accompanying Garda extract. Those documents recorded the hit-and-run offences and described them as serious, but did not convey the applicant’s account of the incident or that the damage was to a vehicle and involved only grazing. The court held that the information, which it described as exculpatory, should have been put before the Minister after officials had specifically requested details.
The court said that a criminal conviction may be relevant to character, but its significance depends on the offence’s circumstances, the time elapsed and any pattern of offending. It found that leaving out the relevant information denied the applicant’s constitutional rights and made the refusal unlawful.
The court did not decide the applicant’s separate argument that the incident could not rationally justify a finding against his good character, because the Minister had not been given the account on which that argument relied. Nor did it decide whether the Minister was required or permitted to consider a separate statutory discretion for people with refugee status. The order quashed the refusal; it did not grant naturalisation or determine the outcome of a fresh decision.