The High Court refused leave for a judicial review application seeking to compel the Minister for Foreign Affairs to issue an Irish passport to a minor, or alternatively to declare that the passport decision had been unlawfully delayed.
The application was brought by D. N. and her minor daughter, identified as N. N. The mother argued that the child was an Irish citizen because she was born in Ireland in 2013 and her father was lawfully resident in the State with sufficient reckonable residence at the time. The father was not named on the child’s birth certificate.
The mother said she had received permission to remain in Ireland in May 2016 on the basis that she was the parent of an Irish citizen child. She argued that this, alongside her existing right of residence, made it unlawful or unreasonable for the Passport Office to delay or refuse the child’s passport and to seek clarification of the child’s citizenship.
Justice O’Regan said earlier correspondence had made clear that the Passport Office would determine whether the child qualified for a passport. The mother’s one-year permission to reside, granted as an exceptional measure, did not establish that the child was an Irish citizen.
The judge identified several gaps in the material. The Passport Office had sought re-registration of the child’s birth certificate, but no effort had been made to do so or to obtain a court declaration of parentage. The evidence offered for the father’s lawful residence was a Garda letter stating that his Stamp 4 permission had expired on 2 March 2013, one week before the child’s birth.
The mother also relied on maintenance proceedings as evidence of paternity. The judge said the District Court order for €50 a week, later reduced on appeal to €40, was not shown to have been complied with: the three postal orders provided were each for €22.12 and did not identify their source. The father’s failure to deny paternity in those proceedings was also insufficient evidence to meet the relevant requirement of the Passport Act 2008.
The court refused leave. It did not grant an order compelling the passport’s issue or make a declaration that either minister had unlawfully delayed it.