The High Court has refused an application by a Zimbabwean minor and his mother to cross-examine a Department of Justice official in a dispute over legal costs arising from delayed family visa proceedings.
Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan ruled on April 30 that the proposed cross-examination was not necessary because the substantive judicial review had become moot after the visa appeal was decided in July 2025. The only remaining issue is which party should bear costs incurred after April 17, 2025.
The first applicant applied in February 2023, aged 14, for a long-stay join-family visa to join his mother, who had been living and working in Ireland since 2022. The visa application was refused in March 2024 and an appeal was lodged on May 2, 2024.
Judicial review proceedings were begun in July 2024 over alleged unreasonable delay and the refusal to prioritise the appeal. The Minister later withdrew an initial prioritisation refusal and issued a fresh refusal in April 2025. The visa appeal itself was decided on July 14, 2025, one day before the judicial review was due to be heard.
The applicants questioned the Department's claim that the appeal had been decided in ordinary chronological order, pointing to published processing times and the timing of the decision. They sought to cross-examine departmental deponent Melissa Brennan about those issues.
The Minister's evidence accepted that the Department's website had not always been correctly updated, but said increased staffing had reduced waiting times. Ms Brennan also exhibited anonymised records of 12 other appeals said to have been processed at the same time, despite no judicial review proceedings having been taken in those cases.
Ms Justice Phelan said there was some basis for questioning the plausibility of the Minister's position, but held that the dispute could be resolved from the affidavits and contemporaneous documents. She said cross-examination would add little while creating disproportionate expense and using further court time. The court will hear the parties on consequential matters.