The High Court has refused two applicants’ request for orders requiring Cork’s registrar to issue them a marriage registration form, finding that the first applicant had not provided satisfactory evidence of her identity.
In a judgment delivered on 16 May 2012, Mr Justice Hedigan said the respondents had not acted unlawfully or breached fair procedures. The couple’s requests for mandamus, declarations and certiorari were refused. The court did not direct the registrar to issue a form or determine that the first applicant was Somali or Tanzanian. It said she could submit further evidence of her claimed Somali identity for the respondents to review.
The first applicant, Lelia Ismail Tahir, claimed to be a Somali national. She and Raymond Paul Sheehan sought to marry and attended the registrar’s office in Cork in 2010. Tahir presented a Refugee Applications Commissioner registration certificate, a medical card and a sworn affidavit of identity. The registrar said the documents were insufficient under section 46(7) of the Civil Registration Act 2004, which allows a registrar to require evidence relating to a party’s identity and other particulars.
After the couple’s August appointment, a Garda National Immigration Bureau officer told the registrar there were questions about Tahir’s identity. The respondents later relied on information that her fingerprints matched those of Pendo Mongo George, a Tanzanian national who had held a Tanzanian passport and obtained a UK visa. The judgment recounts that Tahir had been told about the fingerprint match during her asylum process. Her asylum application and appeal had been refused; the Refugee Appeals Tribunal had found her explanations about the match not credible.
The applicants argued that they had supplied the identity documents available to Tahir and that the respondents had failed to disclose the Garda communication or give her a fair chance to answer it. They also relied on an expert report challenging another report about her origins. The respondents submitted that the identity concerns justified withholding the form.
Justice Hedigan said Tahir had already known of the fingerprint issue, so the fair-procedures complaint had no substance. He found the Irish documents did not establish her claimed Somali nationality and that the conflicting expert reports did not conclusively establish her identity. The judge said the burden was on Tahir to provide satisfactory evidence and concluded she had not done so. The court therefore refused all relief sought.