The High Court has dismissed a Nigerian man’s judicial review of a decision upholding the refusal of permission to remain in Ireland. The court found no unlawfulness in the review decision. It also said a separate request to quash a deportation order did not arise because no such order had been issued.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as S.O. (Nigeria), developed glaucoma around 2008. The judgment says he arrived in the UK on a visa in June 2011 and came to Ireland unlawfully in September that year. He applied for asylum in June 2014. That claim was refused in March 2015; his later application for subsidiary protection was rejected in August 2017, when permission to remain was also refused.
The International Protection Appeals Tribunal rejected his appeal in July 2018. A review of the permission-to-remain refusal upheld the original decision on 28 September 2018. The applicant brought judicial review proceedings in January 2019. Leave was granted in February.
Several grounds were abandoned. The remaining claims concerned the treatment of his medical condition under section 49 of the International Protection Act 2015 and Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Minister’s consideration of the prohibition on refoulement under section 50.
The judge said section 49 consideration was not limited to Article 3, but found that the Minister had considered the relevant section 49 matters. The view that the applicant’s medical condition did not engage Article 8 was within the range of decisions lawfully open to the Minister, the judgment said. A separate Article 8 ground was rejected because it did not identify a particular error of law; the judge added that it would fail on its merits in any event.
On refoulement, the judge said the applicant could not pursue the challenge because he had not made submissions on that issue to the Minister. The judge added that, even if the point could be raised, the alleged failure to consider relevant country information had not been established. The Minister could consider information that had been before earlier protection decision-makers, the judgment said.
The court dismissed the application. It did not rule on any deportation order, because none had been made. The judgment was delivered by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on 23 July 2019.