The High Court has dismissed a judicial review application challenging the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s rejection of a Nigerian man’s appeal for subsidiary protection.
In a judgment delivered on 21 December 2018, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the applicant’s case could not succeed on the ground he had pleaded. The court also considered the substance of his argument and dismissed the application.
The applicant claimed that his family was attacked after his father converted from Islam to Christianity, and that his mother was killed in 2007. He also claimed that a church where his father worshipped was bombed in 2011. These were claims recounted in the judgment, not findings made by the High Court.
He arrived in Ireland in January 2012 and applied for asylum. That application was deemed withdrawn in 2013 after he left direct-provision accommodation without giving a forwarding address. A deportation order made in March 2017 was revoked after he applied for subsidiary protection the following month.
The International Protection Office rejected his account as not credible. The tribunal dismissed his appeal in April 2018, making adverse credibility findings and noting that no medical or psychological evidence had been provided. The applicant then sought an order quashing the tribunal’s decision, arguing that it had wrongly rejected his explanations about his mental health and failed to investigate further.
Justice Humphreys found that the judicial review ground was inadequately particularised and that the applicant had not raised the issue of mental health before the tribunal. The court also found there was no medical evidence of a condition, including at the judicial review stage. The judge said the applicant’s own assertions did not establish that he had a medical condition or that his previous legal representatives had made a mistake by not raising the issue.
The judgment explained that the state has a duty to cooperate in assessing protection applications, particularly where it is better placed to obtain information about conditions in an applicant’s country of origin. But the applicant has primary responsibility for describing personal facts and events. The shared duty, the court said, did not require the tribunal to investigate a personal medical issue that the applicant had not properly substantiated.
The court dismissed the application for judicial review. It did not itself determine the applicant’s protection claim or make a new decision on his entitlement to protection.