The High Court has refused an application for a certificate allowing an appeal to the Supreme Court in a judicial review case concerning a Georgian man’s asylum claim.
The application followed an earlier High Court decision refusing leave to seek judicial review of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of refugee status. In the judgment delivered on 13 November 2014, Mr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh considered whether the proposed appeal met the statutory test: that it raise a point of law of exceptional public importance and that an appeal be desirable in the public interest.
The applicant’s proposed appeal concerned whether a court may uphold an administrative decision after finding that some of its reasons were flawed, where the decision-maker did not state that a remaining reason would independently support the same outcome. The applicant argued that doing so would make the High Court the effective decision-maker.
In the earlier proceedings, the judge accepted that one reason given by the Tribunal was “a little harsh” and that another incorrectly stated the law on failing to seek asylum in a third country. But he found those reasons could be separated from the Tribunal’s central reason: the applicant had not established what adverse consequences he might face on return to Georgia because he had not answered a call to military service.
The judge said the shortcoming was better understood as a failure to establish the forward-looking likelihood of persecution, rather than as a general credibility problem. He said this did not justify quashing the Tribunal’s decision and that the court had not substituted a new reason for the Tribunal’s decision.
In refusing the certificate, the judge said the law on severing independent reasons was established. A court could do so where it was certain the reasons were independent and the surviving reason was capable of sustaining the decision. He concluded the proposed point was not of exceptional public importance and that an appeal would serve no useful purpose. The court refused the certificate; the judgment did not grant the proposed appeal.