The High Court refused an application for leave to seek judicial review of a decision refusing a Ghanaian national’s application for Irish naturalisation. The court found no arguable grounds for granting leave and said the applicant’s failure to disclose when he was investigated in connection with a 2010 sexual assault allegation was, in any event, a separate reason to refuse the application.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on 15 February 2016, concerned a refusal by the Minister for Justice and Equality dated 23 October 2015. The Minister had concluded that the applicant was not of good character, citing the nature of the offences and his failure to disclose them on his application form.
The applicant had been fined €200 after a 2006 conviction for driving without insurance. He was also investigated in connection with a sexual assault allegation arising from an incident in 2010. He was acquitted of sexual assault in the Circuit Court on 1 February 2013. The judgment does not state when the investigation took place; the judge inferred it was more likely than not to have been in 2010, in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
The applicant’s barrister argued that the Minister’s use of the word “offences” showed she had treated him as guilty of the alleged sexual assault. The judge said the decision, read as a whole, recorded the acquittal and distinguished the case from an earlier decision in which a naturalisation refusal had been quashed because the Minister took an inaccurate view of the offence.
The judge said the applicant had clearly failed to disclose the 2006 conviction and, on the papers before the court, was also likely to have failed to disclose the investigation. He found it was not arguable that the Minister had acted unreasonably or irrationally. The judge also considered the reasons for refusal sufficiently clear and rejected the argument that the Minister had to explain why she did not waive the good-character condition.
The court therefore refused leave to seek judicial review. It also said the applicant’s failure to disclose details of when he was investigated breached his duty of disclosure in an ex parte application, and would independently have led to refusal. The applicant’s solicitors were ordered to serve a copy of the judgment on the CSSO within seven days.