The High Court dismissed an ex parte application to prevent the proposed deportation of an anonymised applicant from Dublin to Pakistan on 22 January 2018. The application was made at about 11.09am, one minute before the scheduled deportation time of 11.10am.
The court heard that the applicant, identified as M.I. (Pakistan), had been detained for some weeks after failing in a protection claim. He had applied for readmission to the protection process after his detention. That request was refused on 15 January 2018, and an appeal against the refusal was pending.
Counsel for the applicant sought an injunction in an intended action. The judge noted that the application was made without an affidavit or papers, and was based on counsel’s instructions. Counsel submitted that the applicant had been taken by surprise by the proposed deportation while his appeal was outstanding.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys rejected that submission. He said a right to remain arising from a readmission application applied to the first-instance process, not an appeal. He also considered that the applicant had been in considerable jeopardy since his detention and that an eleventh-hour injunction application was inappropriate. The judgment said the stated 11.10am time was presumably a boarding time rather than take-off, but that this had not been specified.
The judge further said that because the readmission application had been made only after the applicant’s arrest, it was prima facie abusive and presumptively made for delay. He cited earlier High Court decisions in support of that point.
The court ruled only on the urgent injunction application before it and dismissed it as having no merit. The judgment does not state whether the proposed deportation subsequently took place or determine the pending appeal concerning readmission.