The High Court has refused an application for judicial review challenging the rejection of an asylum claim by a woman identified as G. A. A. The court found that country-of-origin information might have helped assess parts of her account, but she had not shown what relevant information was available and overlooked. The court therefore declined to quash the first-instance decision.
The applicant challenged a decision made by the Refugee Applications Commissioner on 14 December 2010. She said her asylum claim was based on involvement with the Union of Forces of Change in Togo and that state forces arrested and mistreated her in February 2005 and April 2010. She also said that after a speech by Patrick Lawson, unidentified people visited her home, prompting her to leave Togo for Ireland.
The Commissioner rejected the claim on credibility grounds. The judgment records concerns that she had not provided promised documents supporting her claimed party membership, had no medical evidence of the alleged beatings, and had given an account of her past Irish visa applications that the decision-maker did not accept. The decision-maker also found that the circumstances of the visit to her home did not establish grounds on which a reasonable person would fear harm.
The applicant argued that Irish and European law required the decision-maker to assess country-of-origin information. The judge rejected the claim that such information must be assessed in every case. He said the legal requirement was to assess all relevant facts about the country of origin at the time of the decision. General country information could not establish whether this applicant belonged to a particular political group or tell whether she had previously applied for an Irish visa.
However, the judge considered that information about how Togo’s state forces treated people who protested could have been relevant to the credibility findings concerning the alleged arrests and mistreatment in 2005 and 2010. He said the decision-maker ought to have assessed, or at least tried to assess, such information.
That did not resolve the judicial review in the applicant’s favour. To justify intervention and have the decision quashed, she needed to identify the relevant country information that had not been assessed and show the seriousness of the alleged legal error. The court had not been given that material. The judge noted that five years had passed since proceedings began and that material mentioned at the hearing had not been placed on affidavit. He said any relevant new material could be submitted to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal.
The court refused the application for judicial review. It did not quash the Commissioner’s decision.