The High Court has extended time for a Pakistani mother and her minor daughter to pursue judicial review proceedings challenging decisions that affirmed refusals of refugee status. The judgment dealt only with the time extension and did not decide the substantive challenges.
The joint case concerned two Refugee Appeals Tribunal decisions dated 20 June 2012. The mother was notified on or about 2 July 2012 and her daughter on or about 13 July. The court said the proceedings were commenced on 11 October 2012. It also recorded that a notice of motion had issued on 7 October 2012, describing the period since the first indication of an objection to an extension as nearly three years.
The mother’s affidavit attributed the delay to her former solicitor seeking counsel’s advice, a change of solicitor, difficulty locating and transferring her file, missing documents, and her difficulty travelling from Cork to Dublin during advanced pregnancy. She said counsel provided an opinion on 2 October 2012 and proceedings were instituted immediately afterwards. The judgment records that she had also been invited to apply for subsidiary protection after the Minister refused refugee status and proposed deportation.
For the daughter’s case, the mother said her daughter was born in Pakistan in 2005 into an Ahmadi family and had suffered persecution because of that status. She also said the daughter’s father had been granted leave to remain in Ireland, with representations substantially concerning his faith and the treatment of Ahmadis in Pakistan. Those statements were affidavit evidence, not findings made in this ruling.
The applicants’ proposed judicial review grounds included challenges to the Tribunal’s assessments of past persecution, risk to the daughter, the applicants’ Ahmadi profiles and internal relocation. They also raised a jurisdictional argument and the treatment of the father’s grant of leave to remain. The court did not determine those grounds.
Applying the rules governing extensions of time, the court found that the mother’s circumstances—including the change of solicitor and counsel, the Long Vacation and her difficulty travelling while late in pregnancy—were good and reasonable grounds. It found the circumstances were outside the applicant’s control or could not reasonably have been anticipated, and that the extension caused no prejudice to the respondents.
The judgment therefore granted the requested extension of time. It expressly described the issue as preliminary and said it was addressed before any further findings. It did not quash the Tribunal decisions or determine the applicants’ refugee claims.