The High Court has refused Asad Ali Cheema’s application for judicial review of the Minister for Justice and Equality’s decision to uphold the refusal of his residence card application. Mr Justice David Keane delivered the judgment on 19 March 2019.
Mr Cheema, a Pakistani national, sought recognition as a permitted family member of his sister-in-law, Anna Straczek, a Polish citizen exercising EU free-movement rights in Ireland. Ms Straczek is married to Mr Cheema’s brother, Ali Hamza. The Minister’s decision, made on review on 24 April 2017, found that Mr Cheema had not established that he was dependent on Ms Straczek or a member of her household in Pakistan, the country from which he had come.
Mr Cheema entered Ireland on a short-stay visa in November 2015, having stated that he intended to visit his brother and signed an undertaking to leave when the visa expired in January 2016. He remained in Ireland and applied for a residence card in February 2016.
His solicitors later said a fire at the family’s rice trading business in Pakistan had destroyed its storage facility shortly after his arrival in Ireland, leaving him dependent on Ms Straczek. They described a €12,500 transfer recorded in 2013 as an investment by her in the business. The application materials included bank statements, withdrawal and payment records, photographs of the fire and a translated newspaper report. The Minister’s review decision said the documents did not establish who made deposits into Mr Cheema’s mother’s account or show that Mr Cheema benefited from them. It also noted a date discrepancy in the records for a claimed €12,580 transfer and treated the payment as an investment rather than financial support to him.
The Minister also found insufficient evidence that Mr Cheema had been a member of Ms Straczek’s household in Pakistan. The decision letter said he lived in the same house as his brother and sister-in-law in Ireland, but there was insufficient information about the household’s occupants, their relationships or how long he had belonged to the household before coming to Ireland. A notice of intention to make a deportation order was attached to the decision letter; the High Court judgment did not determine that separate process.
Mr Cheema argued that the Minister should have raised concerns about gaps in the evidence before deciding the application and had not properly considered his submissions. The court held that he had been given opportunities to present his case and that the Minister was not required to invite further comment on shortcomings in documents Mr Cheema had supplied. It also rejected the claim that the evidence and submissions had not been properly assessed.
The court refused the application. It also refused Mr Cheema’s alternative request for a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union, finding no necessary question of EU law to refer. The judgment ordered the proceedings’ title amended to correct Ms Straczek’s surname, which had been misspelled in the title.