The Court of Appeal has dismissed the State’s appeal against orders requiring the Refugee Appeals Tribunal to reconsider two asylum applications by an anonymised Chinese couple from Fujian province. The court did not determine whether they qualify for refugee status; it upheld a fresh consideration of their cases on specified grounds.
The couple’s account, as summarised in the judgment, was that Chinese family-planning authorities required the wife to have an abortion after she became pregnant following their marriage. They said they went into hiding, had a second son in August 1999, and that the wife was forcibly sterilised later that month. They also said they were fined, fled to Fuzhou and left their children with the husband’s parents. The judgment records their account; these events were not findings made by the Court of Appeal.
They arrived separately in Ireland in April 2000 and applied for asylum in 2005 after being detected by Gardaí. Their applications were refused. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal upheld adverse credibility findings and rejected the husband’s claimed fear of forced sterilisation on return, as well as the argument that the couple belonged to a particular social group. Their appeals had been decided on the papers, without an oral hearing.
The High Court quashed the Tribunal decisions and ordered fresh determinations, holding that the Tribunal had not adequately addressed country-of-origin material and that the credibility concerns related to peripheral aspects of the couple’s account. The State appealed.
The Court of Appeal said the High Court had misstated the test by referring to whether the claim was arguable. It nevertheless concluded that the applications should be reconsidered. Assuming the essential core of the couple’s account was correct for the purpose of analysing the social-group issue, the court held they could not be excluded in advance from consideration as members of such a group. Whether a group was perceived as distinct, and how the policy was enforced, required assessment of the evidence.
On credibility, the court said supporting documents and the couple’s explanations required careful consideration. It was uneasy about comparing accounts given in separate interviews when the applicants had no opportunity to reconcile apparent inconsistencies, while not ruling out such comparisons in general. It upheld the High Court’s conclusion that fuller consideration and explanation were warranted.
The court rejected the separate complaint that the Tribunal had failed to consider relevant country-of-origin information merely because its written decision did not expressly discuss it. It said newly supplied information about changes to China’s one-child policy was not material to the appeal but would be relevant to the fresh consideration.
The appeal was dismissed. The order sends the applications back for reconsideration; it does not grant asylum or decide that the couple’s account was true.