The High Court has refused the Minister for Justice and Equality permission to appeal a ruling concerning the deportation of a Pakistani woman and her daughter. The court held that the Minister had not shown a point of law of exceptional public importance for which an appeal would be desirable in the public interest.
The application was for a certificate under section 5(6) of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000, as amended. Such a certificate was required for the Minister to appeal the High Court’s earlier judgment, delivered in July 2020, to the Court of Appeal. Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered the decision refusing the certificate on 2 September 2020.
The earlier case concerned the Minister’s decision to deport MH and her minor daughter, SH. The judgment recounts that they had lived with MH’s UK-national brother in England before coming with him to Ireland in 2014, and had remained settled in County Offaly. A 2015 application for EU treaty rights was refused on the basis that there was insufficient evidence of dependency. The Minister decided to deport them in September 2018, after receiving submissions in the deportation process. The court noted that the decision followed an unexplained delay of nearly 18 months.
DNA evidence supplied in February 2019 established that MH and her brother were blood relatives. In the earlier judgment, the court said that this evidence supported what MH had claimed, and expressed surprise that the Minister had not chosen to reconsider the deportation decision in light of it. But Justice Barrett clarified in this certificate ruling that the earlier judgment did not find that the Minister was legally required to reopen the decision on the Minister’s own initiative. Nor did it quash the deportation decision on that basis. The earlier judgment had also said that the challenge to the 2017 EU treaty rights decision was out of time and that an order requiring residence cards had not been made out.
The Minister argued that the earlier ruling raised several appealable points, including the treatment of later evidence, delay, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the relevance of a prior deportation judgment. Justice Barrett said the proposed appeal points relied on mistaken accounts of what the earlier judgment had decided. He also rejected the claim that the earlier ruling could be assumed to affect many cases without evidence supporting that contention.
The court found no qualifying point warranting certification and refused the application. The decision addressed only whether the Minister could appeal the earlier ruling; it did not decide a new deportation challenge.