The High Court has quashed a deportation order against an Egyptian man living in Ireland with his wife and young daughter, but has upheld an earlier decision refusing him permission to remain under EU-law principles concerning parents of EU citizen children.
The man lives with his second wife, an EU national, and their daughter, who was born in Ireland in September 2019. He had previously served 33 months of a four-year sentence following convictions in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for offences relating to organising prostitution, brothel keeping, money laundering and use of a false instrument.
In June 2024, the Minister for Justice rejected his application to remain under the Zambrano principle. That EU-law doctrine can give a non-EU parent a derived residence right where removing the parent would effectively force an EU citizen child to leave the Union.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter upheld that refusal. He found that the Minister had lawfully concluded the child could remain with her EU-national mother and had properly assessed the father’s criminal history as presenting a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat.
A separate deportation order was made in December 2024. That decision did not survive judicial review.
The court found that the Minister’s department had accepted in June 2024 that the couple had a stable, subsisting relationship, lived together with their daughter and that the father played a significant role in her care. Just four months later, the deportation assessment questioned whether the marriage remained substantive, whether the couple even lived together and whether there was evidence of a meaningful father-daughter relationship.
Those changed conclusions were based largely on the absence of updated material. However, the department had never asked the man for such information or warned him that its earlier findings might be revisited.
The court held that this was a material breach of fair procedures. The deportation order was quashed and the issue must now be reconsidered by a different decision-maker after the applicant is allowed to make fresh submissions.