The High Court has quashed a decision refusing international protection to a Georgian man because the International Protection Appeals Tribunal did not adequately address a central argument based on his displacement from Abkhazia.
Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell delivered judgment on 28 November 2025 and ordered that the case be remitted for fresh consideration.
The applicant, identified only as B.N., entered Ireland in February 2023 and applied for international protection. His initial account focused on threats arising from his relationship with his partner and opposition from their extended families.
Later submissions introduced a separate issue. His lawyers produced confirmation from Georgian authorities that he had internally displaced person status and argued that, as an ethnic Georgian displaced from Abkhazia, his protection claim required consideration of the risks he would face there and whether relocation elsewhere in Georgia would be reasonable.
That argument was repeated in his appeal to the Tribunal and supported with country information. The Tribunal ultimately rejected his protection claim in April 2024. It referred to difficulties in Abkhazia and noted that B.N. had left there in the 1990s, but the High Court found that it did not properly engage with the legal proposition advanced on his behalf.
The State argued that the point lacked merit and that there was no benefit in sending the case back. The judge declined to decide the underlying issue himself, holding that judicial review is not a substitute for the statutory protection process.
Mr Justice O’Donnell said an applicant is entitled to have a core claim addressed by the Tribunal, whether it arises from factual evidence or a legal argument advanced by representatives.
The court also extended the time for bringing the challenge. The application had been filed one day late after an attempt to lodge papers failed because the stamping office had closed.
The Tribunal decision was quashed and the case must now be reconsidered. The court provisionally proposed awarding B.N. his costs, subject to further argument.