The High Court refused an applicant leave to seek judicial review of decisions refusing him subsidiary protection and making a deportation order, finding that none of the grounds advanced warranted leave.
The applicant, a Nigerian national who arrived in Ireland in February 2010, said he feared being killed by the father of a friend who had been shot dead by police. He claimed the father was a powerful deputy governor who blamed him for his son’s death. The asylum application was rejected in a March 2010 report on credibility grounds, including the absence of media reports of the alleged killing. The applicant withdrew his appeal against that report and later sought subsidiary protection on the same underlying events.
In that application, he challenged the earlier credibility assessment and acknowledged inaccuracies in his asylum account, including how he travelled to Ireland and who arranged his journey. He also accepted that an age declaration submitted with the asylum claim was not genuine, although he said the age stated in it was correct. The Minister refused subsidiary protection in December 2010 and made a deportation order in January 2011.
Justice Cooke held that the Minister was not required to reconsider the same facts and credibility issues during the separate subsidiary protection process, absent new evidence or information capable of showing material error in the earlier assessment. The statutory appeal to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal was the route for challenging those findings. The judge also found that the determination clearly rejected the applicant’s account; references to assessing state protection or relocation on the basis that his account might be true did not alter that conclusion.
The applicant also argued that work on the deportation file began before subsidiary protection was determined, contrary to Regulation 4(5) of the 2006 Regulations. The court rejected that argument. It held that the Minister had to determine subsidiary protection before making a deportation order, but officials could carry out preparatory work beforehand. The order was made personally by the Minister on 13 January 2011, after the subsidiary protection determination on 7 December 2010.
The court rejected the remaining grounds, including claims of prejudgment and inadequate consideration of country information, saying they depended on accepting factual claims the decision-maker had not believed. It concluded that no case had been made out to warrant leave to challenge either decision. The judgment concerned permission to pursue judicial review; it did not quash either decision.