The High Court has rejected a challenge by an Albanian woman to a decision refusing her international protection in Ireland, while accepting that she had suffered domestic violence at the hands of her former fiancé.
The woman, identified as E.S., applied for protection in August 2022. She said her former fiancé had psychologically abused her, assaulted her when she ended their engagement and later threatened to kill her while displaying a gun. She also said Albanian police failed to update her after she reported incidents to them.
The International Protection Appeals Tribunal upheld an earlier refusal of refugee status and subsidiary protection on 30 October 2024. The Tribunal accepted that domestic violence was widespread in Albania and accepted E.S.’s account of assaults, intimidation and abuse. It nevertheless concluded that effective state protection was available.
E.S. challenged that ruling, arguing that the Tribunal had not adequately explained why it relied on a 2023 US State Department report rather than material from Amnesty International and Freedom House.
Mr Justice Barr rejected that argument. He held that the Amnesty report principally addressed the prevalence of domestic violence rather than whether state protection was available, so it did not genuinely conflict with the US report on that issue.
The judge acknowledged that a Freedom House report stated that police were poorly equipped to deal with domestic violence. However, he found that the Tribunal was not required to expressly explain why it preferred the more detailed US report over that single statement. Reading the decision as a whole, its reasoning was clear.
The High Court also granted E.S. a short extension of time for bringing the judicial review, accepting that legal advice had been obtained within the statutory period and that she had needed to travel from Cork to Dublin to swear an affidavit.
Despite that extension, the substantive challenge failed. The requested judicial review reliefs were refused, with final orders and costs left for later determination.