The High Court has refused an appeal certificate sought by an infant asylum applicant and his mother after their judicial review challenge was dismissed. It also declined to refer questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
In a judgment delivered on 25 April 2016, Mr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh considered whether the applicants could appeal to the Court of Appeal under section 5 of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000. The underlying judicial review had been refused in a judgment dated 16 June 2015.
The applicants proposed seven points of law for appeal, concerning matters including the availability of certiorari, minimum European standards, the child’s right to be heard about his mother’s claim, the assessment of country-of-origin information, internal relocation and access to judicial review.
The judge found the proposed points did not meet the statutory test: a point of law of exceptional public importance and a public interest in taking an appeal. He said several questions sought to re-argue issues decided in the underlying case, while others did not arise from that decision or were based on a misconception about the appeal available to asylum applicants.
On the child’s claim, the judge recalled that he had held the child was entitled to be heard on his own case, but not on his mother’s separate claim. The child’s claim had been presented as indistinguishable from hers. The judge said both mother and child could appeal their own decisions to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, and the child could argue there that his decision wrongly relied on the outcome of his mother’s case.
The judgment also stated that the obligation to consider relevant country-of-origin laws and facts was mandatory, but the applicants had not identified relevant information or laws that had not been examined. On internal relocation, the court had found in the underlying proceedings that a place had been sufficiently identified and no legal error had occurred.
The applicants also sought a preliminary reference to the CJEU on seven questions. The judge said a reference could be made only where an answer was necessary to decide the issue then before the High Court: whether to grant the appeal certificate. He found none of the proposed questions would assist with that decision and made no reference.
The court refused the certificate of appeal and declined to refer any question to the CJEU. The underlying refusal of judicial review was not reconsidered in this application.