The High Court has directed the Minister for Justice to decide within 28 days whether documents submitted late by an applicant for an EU family-member residence card satisfy the requirements for the card.
Mr Justice John Cooke made the order after finding that the applicant’s review request had remained undecided for more than six months. The court refused his application to quash the original refusal, which had been made on the information available to officials at the time.
The first applicant, a Pakistani national, arrived in Ireland in 2005. His wife, a Polish national, arrived in 2006. They married in Naas in December 2008. She said she had worked at McDonald’s and later took full-time employment at a Starbucks outlet in Sandyford, County Dublin.
The applicant applied for a residence card in December 2008. In June 2009, the Department sought further documents, including recent payslips and a P60 relating to his wife’s employment. The applicant said he posted the documents on 13 June. They reached the Department on 16 June, the day the application was refused, but the judgment says they did not reach the officials handling the case until after the decision and refusal letter had been prepared.
The refusal letter said the Minister could not verify the wife’s employment and that the evidence did not establish that she was exercising EU treaty rights as required. The couple sought an administrative review. The Minister’s November 2009 response said there was no set time limit for deciding it.
The court said the Minister could make reasonable checks on whether the legal conditions were met and whether supporting documents were authentic, provided those checks did not create extra obstacles. It held that officials were entitled to decide the initial application using the information available to them, because the requested documents had not arrived within the stated 10-day period. Whether the documents would change the result was for the review decision.
Justice Cooke said the review appeared to concern only whether the late documents met the employment-evidence requirement. Although the regulations set no separate deadline for a review, the court held that the Minister had a duty to decide it within a reasonable time. It ordered a decision within 28 days after the order was perfected. The judgment did not grant the residence card or determine whether the submitted documents were sufficient.