The High Court has quashed a deportation decision against a Tunisian father after finding that the Minister for Justice had not assessed how his removal would affect the financial position of his two Irish citizen daughters.
Ms Justice Niamh Hyland ruled on 12 October 2022 that the Minister’s consideration of the children’s rights was incomplete. The court did not decide that the father could remain in Ireland. It quashed the decision and said it would hear further submissions on costs and any other relief, including whether the matter should be sent back to the Minister.
The father, Medhi Achouri, had lived in Ireland since 2004 and held almost continuous permission to live and work here until August 2017. His daughters, born in 2006 and 2008, are Irish citizens. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to offences arising from an incident involving his former girlfriend and her partner. He received a three-year prison sentence, with the final two years suspended. He also had minor road traffic convictions.
The Minister made a deportation order in August 2021. The family challenged it, arguing that the Minister had mishandled the convictions, failed to consider the effect on the daughters and wrongly assessed the father’s employment prospects.
Justice Hyland rejected the challenges concerning the convictions and employment assessment. She said Irish law did not require the Minister to prove a propensity for future violence before taking criminal convictions into account. The employment assessment could stand independently of the father’s lack of permission to work, because it also relied on other stated factors.
The court focused on the daughters’ financial circumstances. Records showed that their father had made regular maintenance payments from 2008 to April 2018, including payments funded by a loan while he was in prison. The parties agreed the court should assume payments continued up to the 2021 decision. They also agreed that deportation would prevent him from providing support at the level he could in Ireland, and that the girls’ mother appeared not to be earning wages while caring for her uncle.
The Minister’s file recorded the maintenance evidence, but the operative assessment addressed the children’s position in only a few lines. Justice Hyland found it did not identify or weigh the loss of maintenance against the reasons for deportation. The court said the balancing outcome remained for the Minister, but the failure to analyse the financial impact meant the required consideration had not been completed.
The judge also observed that the father had not been given an opportunity to provide updated information about his relationship with his daughters after prison, although the Minister later noted that the nature of that relationship was unclear. The court’s formal conclusion, however, was to quash the 20 August 2021 decision and order.