The Supreme Court allowed an appeal concerning deportation notices that had been placed on a departmental file rather than served on an address or delivered personally to the appellant. The Minister for Justice and Equality no longer opposed the appellant’s argument that the proposal to deport had not been lawfully served. The Court said it was therefore unnecessary to hear the appeal on that issue in full.
The judgment, delivered by O’Donnell J on 13 March 2018, records that the appellant, identified as SE, arrived in Ireland from Egypt on 28 September 2015 and claimed asylum at Dublin Airport. He left Balseskin Reception Centre and did not provide an address. His asylum application was later deemed withdrawn after he failed to notify the authorities of a change of address; the judgment says no address had been provided.
The Minister’s file contained a 3 November 2015 letter recording refusal of the asylum request and a decision to consider deportation. A proposal to deport dated 14 January 2016, followed by a notice of the deportation decision dated 4 May 2016, was also placed on the file and marked “registered post”. The judgment states that the appellant later received the notice and deportation order during an interaction with gardaí in Wexford.
The appellant sought leave to challenge the order, arguing that the proposal and subsequent decision notice had not been served as required by law. The High Court refused leave in October 2016. It considered that treating the absence of an address as preventing service could let a person evade the deportation process by failing to engage with it.
By the time the Supreme Court appeal was heard, the deportation order had been withdrawn. The case was accepted to be moot, though the Court had granted leave to appeal because the issues were of general importance. Before the hearing, the Minister accepted that the 14 January proposal had not been lawfully served and could not rely on steps taken after it. Both parties agreed that the High Court order should be set aside and that the appellant should receive his costs of the Supreme Court appeal and unsuccessful High Court applications.
O’Donnell J said the statutory service rules allowed personal service or prepaid registered post, and that placing a letter on a file did not amount to registered-post service. The legislation’s failure to address a case where no address was provided was, in his view, a possible gap in the law, not an absurdity that the courts could remedy by creating a new service rule. The Court allowed the appeal and made the agreed costs orders. It made no further order, and did not decide the separate argument about the form of the deportation order, which was addressed in a companion case.