The High Court granted an interlocutory injunction restraining the deportation of a Nigerian father, finding an arguable case that deportation would deprive his Irish citizen son of meaningful contact with him during the child’s minority. The ruling was interim relief in a judicial review application; the judge said he would discuss the order’s form with counsel and give directions for an early hearing. It was not a final determination of the judicial review.
Mr Justice Hogan said the father had entered Ireland in 2005 and claimed asylum as a Sudanese national, alleging that he had fled attacks by the Janjaweed militia. His asylum claim and appeal failed. The judgment records that correspondence in 2009 disclosed he was born in Nigeria and entitled to Nigerian citizenship. He was deported in April 2010 and later re-entered Ireland, which he said he did using a British passport arranged by a friend.
The father and the child’s mother, a Nigerian national with refugee status, married in 2006 and had a son born in Ireland in 2007. They separated in 2008 and were formally judicially separated in 2011. The child lived with his mother in Dublin while his father resided in Galway. The father said they met at least weekly. The judge also found that the father had misled immigration officials by representing that the couple remained together as a family.
The court rejected the father’s argument under the European Court of Justice’s Ruiz-Zambrano ruling. It found no real prospect that deporting him would force the child to leave Ireland or the European Union: the mother had refugee status and the child was an Irish citizen. The father therefore had no arguable entitlement to an injunction on that EU-law basis.
The judge distinguished the child’s constitutional interests from the father’s conduct. He concluded that, if deported to Nigeria, the father was unlikely to have further personal contact with his son during the child’s minority, since the mother could not realistically be expected to travel there. That raised an arguable issue about the child’s constitutional right to the care and company of his parents. Applying the interlocutory test, the judge held that damages would not be adequate and that the balance of convenience supported protecting the child’s interests for the time being.