The High Court dismissed an application for leave to challenge the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to consent to the transfer of a man serving a prison sentence in the United Kingdom to Ireland. The court ruled that he had not shown an arguable case for judicial review. It did not decide the underlying transfer application or determine what sentence would apply if a transfer were approved.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as M. McK., was convicted in the UK in 2009 of sexual offences against his daughter and stepdaughter. He received an indeterminate sentence for public protection, with a minimum term of eight years on one count and concurrent terms on other counts. The judgment says he was also subject to sex-offender registration requirements and disqualified from working with children.
He sought a transfer to Ireland, but the Minister refused the application in a letter dated 16 December 2015. The refusal identified two central concerns: the UK sentence was not recognised in Irish law and would need to be adapted by the High Court; and the Minister considered that transfer would not promote rehabilitation while the applicant continued to deny the offences.
The applicant argued that the Minister had wrongly assessed what sentence could be imposed following a transfer. The judge held that the Minister was entitled to take a view on the likely adaptation as part of her discretionary decision, while the High Court would ultimately determine any adaptation under the statutory process. He found no arguable basis to challenge the Minister’s view that an eight-year sentence could be the appropriate adaptation. He also rejected the argument that the Minister could not refuse transfer because of the applicant’s continued denial of guilt.
The judge said the rehabilitation concern was an independent reason capable of sustaining the refusal. He considered that the UK sentence’s indeterminate nature gave the applicant an incentive to engage in rehabilitation to support a release decision by the UK Parole Board. The judgment also addressed concerns about possible visits and post-release conditions, but treated them as peripheral to the central reasons for refusal.
The court dismissed the leave application. It also ordered that the existing restriction on reporting the identities of non-professional persons in the proceedings continue permanently. The judge separately criticised the statutory process for determining sentence adaptation as unsatisfactory, but said he was not deciding a separate issue about whether an adaptation could later be amended.