The High Court has dismissed a judicial review challenging the refusal of subsidiary protection to an anonymised applicant identified in the judgment as D.D. (Liberia and Nigeria). The court also refused a request to refer questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The judgment was delivered by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on 27 July 2018.
The applicant sought to quash the protection refusal and, through amended grounds, declarations concerning whether he should have been allowed to remain temporarily while his application was assessed and whether he should have been offered the option of leaving without a deportation order if refused.
The judge said the challenge to the temporary right to remain was, at the latest, out of time because it concerned a March 2009 proposal to deport. He nevertheless considered its merits, finding that the applicant had in practice been allowed to remain while his subsidiary protection application was pending. He also concluded that the cited Supreme Court ruling in Luximon did not apply to this situation, that the applicant had not been prevented from applying, and that later permission to reside made the complaints moot. Any benefit from a declaration was speculative, he said.
The judgment also rejected the applicant’s complaints about country information and reasons for the refusal. The applicant had not identified what specific response he would have made to country material published after the decision. The judge found no irrational reading of the country material and said the decision gave reasons, including reliance on an earlier adverse credibility assessment.
The judge said the applicant’s departure from Ireland while his protection application was pending, and his conviction in the United Kingdom in connection with false documents, would in any event justify refusing relief on discretionary grounds. He also rejected the claim that the applicant lacked an effective remedy, noting that the decision had been considered and was open to judicial review.
The court refused the CJEU reference request, observing that the proposed questions had not been precisely formulated and were not necessary to decide the case. It then dismissed the proceedings. The judgment records that the applicant had later received five-year residence permission following his marriage to a Latvian national, and that the deportation order had been revoked. These later events did not alter the court’s dismissal of the challenge.