The High Court has quashed an International Protection Office decision which rejected an anonymised man’s claimed Afghan nationality without proceeding to examine his substantive claim for international protection.
The applicant, identified as AS, arrived in Ireland in October 2022 and applied for protection. He supplied a copy of an Afghan national identity document, known as a Tazkira, and a translation. He was interviewed by the IPO in January 2024.
On 29 February 2024, the IPO recommended that he receive neither refugee status nor subsidiary protection. It found that his answers about the area where he said he had lived were insufficiently detailed or inconsistent with country information. It also stated that documents he provided could not be verified and therefore had little probative value.
Because the IPO did not accept that he was Afghan, it did not assess his claimed fears of persecution or serious harm any further.
Ms Justice Sara Phelan held that the decision did not adequately show how the Tazkira had been assessed. The judgment said a generic statement that documents could not be verified was insufficient where the national identity document was central to the decisive question of nationality.
The court also examined the IPO’s stated general approach that Tazkiras are not routinely verified, including because they lack readily verifiable security features. Phelan J concluded that where Afghan nationality remains genuinely in doubt, the IPO should consider available means of authentication, potentially including expert evidence. She found that this general approach created a systemic issue amounting to the exceptional type of fundamental flaw which permitted judicial review of a first-instance decision despite the normal appeal route to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal.
The court rejected separate judicial review grounds concerning the applicant’s age and alleged inconsistencies with country information, holding those matters could be dealt with on appeal.
The entire IPO determination was quashed and the application was sent back for a fresh decision by a different international protection officer.