The High Court refused an application for leave to seek judicial review of a deportation order, finding no stateable case that the Minister had acted unlawfully or unreasonably in concluding that the applicant had not established family life in Ireland for the purposes of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The anonymised applicant, identified in the judgment as K. A. [Nigeria], sought to challenge a deportation order made on 20 September 2011. The application was heard at the leave stage. Although the original grounds raised about 20 issues and included a challenge to an earlier Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision, counsel narrowed the case at the hearing to one argument: that the Minister had wrongly treated the applicant’s ties with her aunt and cousins as no more than normal emotional ties, and had therefore failed to assess proportionality under Article 8.
The judgment records that the applicant arrived in Ireland in November 2007, aged about 14, and lived with an aunt and the aunt’s two children. She had applied for asylum, which was refused, and her application for subsidiary protection was also unsuccessful. In a request for permission to remain, it was submitted that the aunt regarded the applicant as a daughter and the cousins as an older sister. The applicant’s schooling and church activities were also cited.
Justice Cooke said the Minister’s memorandum had described the applicant’s circumstances and considered the Article 8 argument. The court assessed whether the Minister’s conclusion—that the household arrangements did not amount to established “family life” in the legal sense—was rational and consistent with the applicable criteria.
The court pointed to the applicant’s life in Nigeria until 2007, the short period she had lived with her aunt in Ireland, and the absence of evidence describing the day-to-day nature of their relationship. It also noted that the applicant had not been mentioned as a family member in the aunt’s dealings with authorities, and that counsel accepted the case was based on family life said to have developed in Ireland since 2007, rather than a relationship with the aunt in Nigeria that had resumed there.
The court concluded that the material before the Minister did not show a settled household with established ties of mutual reliance independent of the applicant’s asylum claim and attempt to seek a better life. It refused leave. The ruling addressed whether the proposed judicial review had an arguable basis; it did not quash the deportation order.