The High Court has granted a Congolese man leave to seek judicial review of a decision refusing his application to re-enter Ireland’s asylum process. The ruling concerns the threshold for bringing that challenge; it does not decide whether the refusal was unlawful or quash the decision.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as R.W.B., applied for asylum in Ireland in December 2008. His claim was refused, and a deportation order was signed in February 2011. In July 2012, he applied for the Minister’s consent to make a subsequent asylum application, relying chiefly on a 2011 report about the return of Congolese asylum seekers and other country information.
The application was refused in August 2012. A review was also refused the following month. The review decision referred to a 2006 UNHCR statement that it had no evidence of systematic abuse of failed asylum seekers returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and said the applicant had provided no new evidence. The applicant argued that the reviewer had failed to address the report and submissions about his position as a failed asylum seeker.
At the leave hearing, the respondent conceded that several grounds were arguable, including that the review may have treated relevant matters as irrelevant, failed to recognise the country information as new evidence, and failed to apply the statutory test. The court separately found substantial grounds to argue that the reviewer did not adequately explain the treatment of the report and the applicant’s submissions, or whether the report was considered capable of meeting the statutory threshold.
The judge granted leave on grounds 4, 5, 7, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15 and 16. Grounds 6 and 11 were reformulated by the court. Leave was refused on other grounds discussed in the judgment, including the challenge to the effectiveness of the review procedure, which the court said had been addressed by a Court of Appeal decision.
The judgment records that the applicant was deported to the DRC in June 2013. His solicitor later reported, on the applicant’s account, that he had been tortured and detained there, then fled through Zambia to South Africa. The solicitor also reported that the applicant’s shop was destroyed in a xenophobic attack and that he returned to Ireland, where he was refused leave to land and detained. In May 2015, another High Court judge granted an interim injunction preventing his deportation to the DRC.
The court stressed that this was a leave application concerning the section 17(7) review decision alone. It did not determine the substantive challenge or decide whether the applicant should be admitted to the asylum process.