The High Court has refused an Irish citizen’s application to overturn the refusal of a family reunification visa for his wife, finding that the Minister for Justice’s decision was open to her and did not breach his constitutional or European human rights.
In a judgment delivered on 3 December 2021, Ms Justice Tara Burns also ordered the applicant to pay the respondent’s costs. The court refused the relief sought in the judicial review; it did not itself decide the wife’s visa application.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as AZ, was born in Iraq and became an Irish citizen in 2014. He married Ms S, an Iraqi woman who continues to live in Iraq, in 2015. She applied for a family reunification visa in 2018. After the application and appeal were refused, the applicant sought judicial review of the appeal decision issued in February 2019.
The couple’s case included submissions that the applicant’s workplace injury and resulting disability benefit prevented him from meeting the Minister’s financial criteria, and that security conditions made it unreasonable to expect them to live together in Iraq. The Minister accepted that receipt of disability allowance did not by itself prevent him from sponsoring a family member, but declined to waive the separate income requirements.
The Minister’s decision cited concerns about the applicant’s financial circumstances and the potential impact on public funds and services. It also found insufficient evidence of the wife’s accommodation arrangements, the couple’s communication and meetings, and money transfers said to have been made to her. On Iraq, the decision said there was insufficient evidence that Ms S faced particular risks or that the circumstances were exceptional.
The court applied the Supreme Court’s guidance in *Gorry v Minister for Justice*, which says marriage to an Irish citizen does not automatically give a non-national spouse a right to enter Ireland. The judgment said the Minister had considered the couple’s relationship and the consequences of refusal, alongside the State’s interests in immigration control and public resources. It noted that the applicant had travelled to Iraq three times and had stayed for six months on one visit.
The judge found the Minister’s assessment of the relationship and the Article 41 and Article 8 rights was open to her. She also found it was appropriate to consider the applicant’s wider financial history when deciding whether exceptional grounds justified an exemption from the policy. The applicant’s earnings had been limited before his workplace injury, and the court concluded that refusing an exemption was not unreasonable or disproportionate and did not amount to applying a fixed policy.
The applicant therefore failed to establish any ground of challenge. The court refused judicial review and made an order for the respondent’s costs against him.