The Supreme Court has awarded a Georgian international protection applicant half of his costs from an earlier High Court hearing even though the State ultimately succeeded in overturning his case.
The applicant, identified as Mr K, had challenged a March 2021 decision of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal refusing him permission to work while his protection application was being processed.
The tribunal had found that delays between September 2019 and August 2020 were attributable to Mr K because he had not co-operated with the processing of his application.
Mr K initially succeeded in the High Court. Mr Justice Heslin held that the tribunal decision was invalid and later ruled that Mr K was entitled to Francovich damages, a form of compensation for sufficiently serious breaches of EU law.
The State appealed directly to the Supreme Court. The court referred questions about EU law to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which ruled in January 2026 that Ireland's 2018 regulations had properly transposed the relevant directive. However, the EU court also held that responsibility for delay could not be treated as an all-or-nothing question and had to be apportioned where several factors contributed.
When the case returned to Ireland, the Supreme Court held that parts of the tribunal's reasoning could no longer stand. But it also found that Mr K had not proved that none of the more than nine months of delay was attributable to him. The State therefore succeeded on the appeal and the damages claim failed.
In the latest ruling, the court said the State would normally have been entitled to its costs because it had been entirely successful. It nevertheless found Mr K's litigation reasonable. The case required clarification from the EU court and resolved an important issue in the labour-market access regime.
Mr K was awarded 50% of his costs from the first High Court hearing. No costs were awarded for the second High Court proceedings, the Supreme Court hearings or the EU reference.