The High Court dismissed a judicial review application challenging whether a deportation order had to be made personally by the Minister for Justice. Mr Justice Gerard Hogan held that the order could lawfully be made in the Minister’s name by an authorised senior civil servant under the Carltona doctrine.
The applicants, Nigerian nationals including two minors suing through their next friends, challenged a deportation order dated 29 July 2011. The order was made in the Minister’s name by Noel Waters, then Director General of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service. The applicants raised no other grounds against the order, and did not dispute Waters’ general competence or that the Minister had authorised him to make such orders.
The proceedings initially came before the court on an application for an interlocutory injunction to prevent deportation while a leave application was pending. At the court’s prompting, the parties agreed that the matter would proceed as the full hearing of the judicial review. The court considered only the legal question of who could make the decision; it did not determine any other challenge to the deportation order.
Justice Hogan considered the Carltona principle, under which responsible officials may exercise ministerial functions in the Minister’s name unless legislation or the general law excludes that arrangement expressly or by necessary implication. He accepted that a deportation decision can involve detailed consideration of facts, government policy, statutory restrictions, constitutional provisions and the European Convention on Human Rights. But he was not satisfied that its importance meant the Minister had to decide every case personally.
The court concluded that the Immigration Act 1999 did not impliedly displace the Carltona principle. It held that the authorised official could make the decision in the Minister’s name and dismissed the judicial review application. The judgment did not decide whether the deportation was otherwise justified.