The High Court refused an application to stop the deportation of an anonymised Bangladeshi man while his appeal over a separate subsidiary-protection decision remained before the Supreme Court.
Mr Justice McDermott ruled on 16 May 2013 that the applicant had not shown substantial grounds to challenge the form or substance of the deportation order. His challenge focused on its timing: he argued that it should not be executed before the Supreme Court decided his appeal concerning the refusal of subsidiary protection.
The applicant had arrived in Ireland in October 2008 and claimed asylum. His application was refused by the Refugee Applications Commissioner, and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal upheld that recommendation. He later applied for subsidiary protection. The Minister refused that application in August 2011, and the High Court upheld the refusal in a separate judicial review judgment by Ms Justice Clark. The applicant appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.
The deportation order was made in October 2012 after the subsidiary-protection refusal. The applicant sought judicial review and an interlocutory injunction preventing his arrest, detention or deportation while the proceedings were pending. He argued, among other things, that the order should await the Supreme Court appeal and that return to Bangladesh would put him at risk. His account involved a land dispute and an alleged murder accusation. The judgment records that no claim of risk of state-imposed capital punishment was made in the subsidiary-protection or deportation process.
Applying the Supreme Court’s framework in *Okunade*, Mr Justice McDermott said the applicant had not established a fair question to be tried on substantial grounds. The deportation order’s legality in form and substance was not challenged, and the court found that the sequence of decisions followed the options letter previously given to the applicant. It also noted that the earlier High Court ruling had upheld the subsidiary-protection refusal and that no new facts had been advanced.
The judge further concluded that the material before him did not provide a credible basis to find a real risk of significant harm on deportation. He gave weight to the public interest in implementing immigration decisions found to be prima facie valid. Even if substantial grounds had been established, he said, there were no countervailing factors sufficient to justify interim relief.
The court refused the application. It did not determine the merits of the pending Supreme Court appeal, and the judgment states that it was not for the High Court to anticipate how that appeal would be decided.