The High Court has quashed a decision refusing an applicant Irish citizenship after finding that two reasons concerning his UK asylum history were factually unsustainable.
In a judgment delivered on 30 January 2017, Ms Justice O’Regan ruled on a judicial review of the Minister for Justice and Equality’s decision of 27 November 2015 to refuse the applicant a certificate of naturalisation. The applicant is identified in the judgment only as S.H.
The Minister’s attached submission recommended refusal on the basis that the applicant had made clearly unfounded asylum applications in Ireland and the UK and had been untruthful, which the submission said reflected on his character. The refusal referred to three matters: an alleged earlier UK asylum application under a different name and date of birth; inconsistent accounts of when and from where he travelled to Ireland; and different accounts of his marital status.
The judge accepted that the Minister had given reasons and rejected the applicant’s argument that an adverse assessment of good character required evidence of criminality. She also held that the Minister’s statutory discretion did not permit arbitrary or capricious decisions and that the reasons given had to be factually sustainable.
The respondent accepted that the claim that the applicant had used a different name and date of birth in a UK asylum application was incorrect. The judgment also noted that a UK Home Office fax from 29 April 2003 said the applicant’s file was unavailable. The information then available indicated that his asylum claim had been refused and an appeal was awaiting consideration. The judge found that this information could not support describing the UK application as clearly unfounded.
The judge could not determine how much weight the Minister had given each reason, or whether the remaining reasons alone would have led to the same outcome. She therefore found that the two UK-related inaccuracies could not be separated from the refusal so that the rest of the decision survived. She quashed the decision of 27 November 2015. The judgment does not itself grant citizenship or decide that the application must be approved.