The High Court has refused an application for leave to seek judicial review of the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to revoke a deportation order against an anonymised Congolese man. The ruling concerned a second application to revoke the order under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999; it did not revisit the original deportation decision.
The man, identified in the judgment as F.B.K., was deported in February 2011. His wife and three Irish citizen children remained in Ireland. After an earlier request to revoke the order was refused in February 2012, his solicitors made a second application, supported by family letters, school information, medical notes and evidence of contact with the children. The Minister refused it in January 2013.
The applicants argued that refusing revocation interfered with the family’s rights under Irish, European Union and human rights law. They said the children had a right to grow up with their father, that their best interests and family contact had not been properly considered, and that the Minister’s assessment of the evidence about the father’s role in their lives was unfair. They also argued for an independent appeal mechanism.
The court applied the Supreme Court’s guidance in *Smith and Smith*, which limits challenges to a second or later refusal to cases involving significant new circumstances that were not before the Minister previously, with a compelling explanation where relevant information was available earlier. It found that the second application’s evidence of contact, the daughter’s letter and the arguments about the children’s rights could have been raised in the first application or challenged at that stage.
The judge also found no arguable case that the children would have to leave Ireland or the European Union because of their father’s deportation. Their mother had permission to reside in Ireland, and the court said there was no evidence that the children were so dependent on their father that they would have to leave. It concluded that the Minister had considered the relevant European law and the family’s rights, and that the challenge to the assessment of the evidence did not meet the threshold for judicial review.
The court refused leave on all grounds. It did not quash the deportation order or the Minister’s refusal to revoke it; the order remained in force.