The High Court has refused a Somali national’s judicial review challenges to the Minister for Justice’s decision not to process his subsidiary protection application and to a later proposal to deport him. The court also refused his application to amend the grounds of both cases to challenge the handling of his original asylum application in 2009.
The applicant had been recognised as a refugee in Hungary in 2006. When he applied for refugee status in Ireland in 2009, the Refugee Applications Commissioner told him his claim would not be admitted for processing because he had asylum in Hungary and had not claimed fear of persecution there. The court found that his Irish asylum application had not been refused by the Minister.
A deportation order made in 2011 was revoked in 2012 under a settlement. The Minister agreed to consider applications for subsidiary protection and leave to remain. The court found that both sides entered the settlement on the understanding that the applicant was a failed asylum seeker, but that this was mistaken. The Minister later said it was legally impossible to consider subsidiary protection in his circumstances.
The judge held that the governing regulations did not require or permit the Minister to consider subsidiary protection for someone whose asylum application had not been refused. The settlement could not give the Minister a power that the law did not confer. The court therefore found no basis to quash the refusal or order the Minister to process the application.
The applicant also challenged a February 2013 notice proposing deportation. The court said the notice gave him a further opportunity to make representations about leave to remain and explained why the subsidiary protection application would not be processed. It found no substantial grounds to grant leave for judicial review of the notice, and said the applicant could not have shown at a full hearing that issuing it was fundamentally flawed on the grounds advanced.
The applicant sought to add a claim that his original asylum application remained outstanding and should be determined. The court found that this was a late challenge to the 2009 decision, that the issue could have been raised earlier, and that the proposed amendment significantly enlarged the cases. It refused the amendments and dismissed the applications.