The High Court quashed a decision affirming a deportation order after finding that two shortcomings in the assessment of an Irish citizen child’s position, considered together, made the decision unsatisfactory.
The judicial review concerned a decision dated 16 December 2015 affirming a deportation order against the first applicant, a Nigerian national. The order had been made on 23 April 2014. The applicants challenged the decision on the basis that it did not adequately consider the child’s constitutional rights to her father’s care and society, and that it did not refer to an undated letter from Tusla submitted on 10 December 2015.
The child was born in July 2015 to the first and second applicants. The judgment says the first applicant had been seen to have a parenting role with two children in the home. An earlier Tusla letter, dated 1 September 2015, was mentioned in the deportation decision. The later letter described the first applicant as playing a “very important role” in caring for both children and taking an “active role in parenting”.
The Minister accepted that the later letter was not mentioned in the decision, but argued that its contents were effectively the same as the earlier letter. The court found the later letter described the parenting role in stronger terms. However, it also found that the earlier letter confirmed a parenting role and that the decision, read as a whole, did not question whether the applicants lived together. The judge held that failure to mention the later letter alone would not invalidate an otherwise lawful decision.
The decision acknowledged that the child was an Irish national with constitutional and Article 8 rights, while stating those rights were not absolute and could be restricted. It also noted that she was not solely dependent on the first applicant. The judge described this consideration of the child’s constitutional rights as “particularly brief”, but concluded that the minimal reference alone would not invalidate the decision.
The court said the mere fact that a person is the parent of an Irish citizen child does not make a deportation order invalid. It also noted that the Minister was not required to address each issue in a highly specific format, provided the general principles were applied to the case.
Ultimately, the judge held that the brief treatment of the child’s rights, combined with the failure to refer to the later Tusla letter, made the respondent’s decision unsatisfactory. The court quashed the decision. The judgment does not state that the deportation order itself was quashed.