The High Court has ordered a fresh international protection appeal for a Georgian woman who said she endured years of stalking and threats before leaving the country.
Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell on March 10 quashed an August 2024 decision of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal and directed that the woman's appeal be reconsidered by a differently constituted tribunal.
The applicant, identified only as T.M., told protection authorities that a man began pursuing her in 2018 while she worked at a hotel in Georgia. She said the conduct escalated from calls and messages to repeated stalking, public abuse and threats to kill her if she entered another relationship.
She reported the matter to police in 2018 but said nothing was done. She moved to different cities, later left for Italy in August 2021 and arrived in Ireland in June 2022.
The International Protection Office accepted her account and found she had a well-founded fear of persecution, but refused protection because it considered Georgian state protection available. The Tribunal reached the same conclusion on appeal, while also accepting that T.M. was a woman victim of stalking belonging to a particular social group.
The High Court found the central flaw lay in the Tribunal's treatment of country-of-origin information. Mr Justice O’Donnell said the material showed improvements in Georgia's response to gender-based violence but provided very little clear support for a finding that protection was actually effective, particularly in stalking cases.
The judge held that the Tribunal had effectively conflated improvement with effectiveness and that its conclusion did not rationally flow from the material before it.
The court rejected separate complaints concerning use of an older US State Department report, police oversight and adequacy of reasons. The ruling does not decide whether T.M. qualifies for refugee or subsidiary protection; that question must now be determined afresh by another tribunal.