The High Court has refused to overturn an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision denying protection to a Georgian man who claimed he faced discrimination because he spoke Russian.
I.M., who was born in 2001 and arrived in Ireland in April 2022, challenged an October 2024 Tribunal decision affirming an earlier recommendation that he receive neither refugee status nor subsidiary protection.
His claim was that, as a Russian speaker in Georgia, he could be perceived as supporting Russia and subjected to discrimination. The International Protection Office had rejected significant parts of his account as vague, inconsistent and lacking detail.
I.M. appealed and requested an oral hearing. Because Georgia was designated a safe country of origin, the statutory default was a papers-only appeal unless the Tribunal considered an oral hearing necessary in the interests of justice.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter held on 11 February 2026 that the Tribunal acted lawfully in refusing an oral hearing. The credibility concerns were not based on demeanour, such as hesitation or evasiveness, and could instead be assessed from the written record. The applicant had also failed to identify additional evidence he wished to give orally.
The court rejected further arguments concerning the Tribunal’s treatment of his passport. I.M. had said he deliberately discarded it in London, and the judge held that the Tribunal was entitled to treat that conduct as relevant to credibility.
The court also found that the Tribunal had not misunderstood the central protection claim. It had considered his argument that Russian-speaking Georgians could be regarded as Russian sympathisers, but found the country information before it supported discrimination against Russian citizens or ethnic Russians rather than Georgian citizens who spoke Russian.
The court further rejected the challenge to the Tribunal’s treatment of missing documentation and its application of the statutory benefit-of-the-doubt provisions.
The application for judicial review was therefore refused.