The High Court refused three applicants leave to seek judicial review of deportation orders and decisions refusing them residence permits under EU law. Mr Justice Hedigan delivered the judgment on 13 December 2007.
The applicants sought to quash deportation orders made against the first three applicants in August 2002 and later refusals of residence applications. They also sought orders requiring the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to grant residence and preventing their deportation.
The fourth applicant was a German national and an EU citizen. The first and second applicants were her husband’s parents, and the third was their son. The husband was not a party to the case.
The first three applicants arrived in Ireland from Belgium on 30 May 2000 and claimed asylum. Their claims were refused by the Refugee Appeals Commissioner in December 2001, and that decision was upheld by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal in May 2002. Deportation orders were signed in August 2002. They were required to present themselves for deportation the following month but did not do so.
They applied in May 2004 for residence permits under Regulation 1612/68. The application was refused in June 2005 because they had not established that they were dependants in their country of origin, and because the second and third applicants were working. A later application was refused after authorities learned that the fourth applicant had stopped working without notifying them.
The applicants submitted a certificate from an administrative office in Russia stating that they had lived with the fourth applicant’s family from October 1999 to March 2000, after a fire destroyed their belongings. The judge said he did not have enough information to assess the document’s authenticity, but considered it unnecessary to decide that issue because it did not establish dependency at the relevant time.
The court considered the central issue to be whether the first three applicants depended on the fourth. Applying the stated EU-law test, the judge said dependency required a factual need for material support to meet essential needs in the country of origin, or the place from which relatives came to join the EU citizen. He noted that the second and third applicants were employed and that there was no evidence the fourth applicant materially supported the family, either in Ireland or in their country of origin when they applied.
The judge also observed that the first three applicants had been in Ireland for about four years before the fourth arrived. He concluded that the circumstances made this an inappropriate case for the court to grant leave. He added that, even apart from that conclusion, the Minister had ample evidence to decide that the applicants were not dependants. The court refused leave to seek judicial review; it did not determine the substantive judicial review claims.