The High Court ruled that the Refugee Applications Commissioner acted outside her powers by suspending consideration of Iraqi asylum applications in March 2003. The court said the Commissioner must complete a report on an Iraqi applicant’s case with a recommendation consistent with findings already made. It did not decide that he should be granted refugee status.
The applicant, an Iraqi national and surgeon, came to Ireland with his wife and child in September 2002 and applied for refugee status. He said he feared persecution because of his political opinion and relied on incidents at the hospital in Tikrit where he had worked. Those were his claims, not findings made in this judgment about what had happened to him in Iraq.
An officer interviewed him in February and March 2003 and prepared a report. The report recorded findings that his account was credible, that he faced persecution and that his fear was well founded. It also contained a typed recommendation that he be declared a refugee, but that recommendation had not been signed. The Commissioner’s evidence was that a more senior officer still had to examine the file and make the recommendation.
The Commissioner suspended Iraqi applications after military operations began in Iraq, citing the rapidly changing situation and advice from the UN refugee agency. The applicant was later told his application would be considered again. In April 2004, the Commissioner recommended that he not be declared a refugee. The Commissioner agreed in the judicial review proceedings that the April 2004 decision should be quashed.
Justice Finlay Geoghegan held that the March 2003 report contained the Commissioner’s findings, but not a completed recommendation. The Commissioner therefore was not required to send that unsigned report to the Minister as a positive recommendation. However, the legislation required applications to be investigated and determined in a timely manner, and did not authorise an indefinite suspension of cases from a particular country. The court held that the suspension was invalid.
The court further concluded that the Commissioner could not reopen the investigation or go behind the findings already made. A higher executive officer must complete the report by examining the file as it stood in March 2003 and making a recommendation consistent with those findings. If that recommendation leads to refugee status, the court observed, it would be based on circumstances as they existed then. The judgment did not itself make that recommendation or grant the applicant refugee status. The judge said counsel would be heard before the precise relief was determined.