The Court of Appeal has dismissed appeals by five members of an Albanian family who sought to quash decisions refusing them subsidiary protection and the resulting deportation orders.
The appeals concerned a husband and wife in one case, and their son, his wife and their minor child in the other. The family identify as members of the Gabel ethnic community. They claimed they faced persecution or serious harm in Albania because of their ethnicity, including threats and a risk of inadequate police protection.
The Minister for Justice refused their subsidiary-protection applications and made deportation orders. The family were deported to Albania in 2013 under orders signed in 2011, and had continued to live there. They sought judicial review of the protection refusals and deportation orders. Their challenge to the earlier asylum refusals was abandoned, leaving the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s adverse credibility findings unchallenged.
The High Court refused the applications in April 2018. The family appealed, arguing that the Minister’s conclusion that state protection was available in Albania did not follow from the country information considered, and that the prior credibility findings could not sustain the protection refusals.
In a judgment delivered on 5 February 2020, Ms Justice Máire Whelan said the issues were not moot despite the family’s years in Albania. The deportation orders could affect their ability to re-enter Ireland unless quashed or revoked, and they had a constitutional right of access to the courts to challenge the orders.
The Court of Appeal found that the Minister’s decisions relied on country-of-origin information and the records and submissions before him. The material acknowledged problems including unprofessional conduct and corruption in the Albanian police, while also describing a functioning police force and an ombudsman process for complaints. The court concluded that the Minister could reasonably find state protection available, and that the High Court had been entitled to reject the family’s challenge to that assessment.
The court also held that the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s credibility findings were relevant to the later protection decisions. Those findings had not been challenged, and the family had provided no new or additional evidence requiring the Minister to reconsider them. The Court of Appeal treated credibility as an additional factor supporting the refusals, rather than the sole or primary basis for them.
The court declined to refer questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union, finding the proposed questions did not arise for decision in the appeals. It dismissed both appeals, leaving the High Court’s refusal to quash the subsidiary-protection decisions and deportation orders in place.