The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by an anonymised refugee who argued that her eldest daughter should qualify for family reunification despite having turned 18 before the relevant application was made.
Mr Justice Maurice Collins delivered a concurring judgment on 25 November 2025, agreeing with Ms Justice Dunne that the appeal should be dismissed.
The appellant, identified as N.S., was informed in February 2022 that she had been declared a refugee. She applied for family reunification on 4 March 2022 in respect of family members including her eldest daughter, S.N. However, S.N. had turned 18 in October 2021.
Section 56 of the International Protection Act 2015 provides that a sponsor’s child is a family member for the statutory scheme where, on the date of the family reunification application, the child is under 18 and unmarried.
N.S. argued principally that EU law required the daughter’s age to be assessed at the earlier date on which N.S. had applied for international protection. She also challenged the provision under the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Supreme Court rejected those arguments. Mr Justice Collins held that Ireland had not opted into the EU Family Reunification Directive and therefore was not bound by that Directive or by Court of Justice decisions interpreting it. He said the Oireachtas was entitled to create its own broader family reunification scheme beyond Ireland’s minimum EU obligations and to choose the operative age cut-off.
The court also rejected the constitutional equality argument, finding that distinguishing between children who were under 18 when reunification was sought and those already adults was neither arbitrary nor irrational.
The ECHR challenge also failed. The judgment found no Strasbourg authority requiring Ireland to assess a child’s age at the earlier asylum-application date.
The appeal was therefore dismissed. The judgment concerns eligibility under the statutory scheme and does not identify the appellant or her daughter beyond their initials.