The High Court has dismissed a judicial review challenge to the revocation of an Egyptian man’s residence card, finding he had not demonstrated that the conditions for his derived EU residence rights were met.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered the judgment on 15 February 2019. The applicant had received a residence card in 2013 as the family member of his Lithuanian spouse. The couple separated in or around June 2014. He did not notify the Minister for Justice and Equality of the separation at that time.
After the applicant acknowledged the separation when questioned on returning to Ireland in July 2017, the Minister sought documents about whether his spouse continued to exercise EU Treaty rights. The applicant did not provide the requested documents. The Minister proposed revoking the card in October 2017 and revoked it in January 2018. A review upheld that decision in April 2018.
The applicant argued, among other things, that the Minister had not given adequate reasons and could not find that his spouse was no longer exercising EU Treaty rights while she had not been subject to removal proceedings and had received social welfare payments.
The judge rejected the complaint that reasons were missing. He said the decision relied both on the applicant’s failure to provide documents and on the Minister’s view that the spouse was no longer exercising EU Treaty rights. Whether those reasons were valid was a separate issue, which the court considered under the challenge to the decision’s lawfulness.
On the benefits argument, the judgment said the material before the Minister showed the spouse had not worked for a year and had not returned to work within six months of her earlier employment. Under the applicable residence rules, the judge concluded, she had ceased to exercise EU Treaty rights by mid-2014 at the latest, and again by mid-2017 at the latest after a period of employment in 2016. The revocation proposal was issued in October 2017. The judge observed that the benefits payments appeared inconsistent with the Minister’s assessment of her entitlement, but said that did not establish the residence-card decision was unlawful.
The court also rejected the argument that the Minister had to make a concluded finding about the spouse’s precise legal status. A further argument that the Minister could not require documents from an estranged spouse was not pleaded. The judge addressed it for completeness, noting that the applicant had supplied little documentation, including documents relating to himself, and that regulations allowed the Minister to require evidence from an applicant.
The judge said the applicant’s evidence supported the view that the relationship was real and that the couple had suffered two stillbirths. Nevertheless, he found the applicant had not shown that the residence requirements were met and dismissed the application.