The High Court granted leave for a Nigerian woman to seek judicial review of the Minister’s refusal to revoke her deportation order, finding an arguable question about the treatment of a medical report in the decision. The court did not quash the refusal or decide the eventual judicial review.
The woman had arrived in Ireland in 2006 and sought asylum, citing fear of returning without adequate medical care for sickle cell anaemia. Her asylum appeal and later applications for protection and permission to remain were unsuccessful. A deportation order was made in July 2008. She did not challenge that order.
She later married an Irish citizen and had twins, who are Irish citizens. The Minister refused her first request to revoke the order in 2009. Judicial review proceedings challenging that refusal were begun and then withdrawn. A second revocation request, made in December 2010 and supplemented by further submissions, was also refused. The present case concerned that second refusal.
The court said the second request largely repeated arguments made earlier about the family’s rights, the children’s interests, the impact of deportation and the balance between immigration control and family life. It found no new facts in those arguments that the Minister was required to consider again. Most of the later submissions likewise revisited the woman’s medical history and added country information about healthcare in Nigeria.
The court identified one potentially new matter: a February 2011 report from a Galway hospital consultant. The report said that stopping the woman’s comprehensive treatment would put her at risk of death and expressed concern that she would not receive the required complex care in a Nigerian public hospital.
The Minister’s decision memorandum discussed the report and country information, but the High Court noted that it quoted other passages from the report and did not mention the warning about the risk of death if treatment stopped. The court said it was arguable that the Minister had treated the issue as a difference in the standard of care available in Ireland and Nigeria, without adequately considering whether discontinuing the existing treatment could itself create a risk engaging protections under refugee law and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Leave was granted to apply for an order quashing the second refusal on that ground. The court made no final finding that the Minister had acted unlawfully; the permitted challenge remained to be determined.