The Court of Appeal upheld a High Court order quashing the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to grant David Nwoke a visa to enter and reside in Ireland. It removed the part of the High Court order that had sent his application back for reconsideration, after further applications made the appeal moot.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan on 27 October 2017, said the appeal concerned an order made by the High Court on 17 December 2015, following a written judgment delivered on 19 November that year. The High Court had quashed the visa refusal and remitted Mr Nwoke’s application for reconsideration by or on behalf of the Minister.
The Court of Appeal was told at the hearing that Mr Nwoke had submitted further applications. One had been refused, and a third was about to be, or had been, delivered. The court therefore treated the appeal as moot. It did not give a separate judgment on the broader issues, which it said were considered in judgments delivered that day in related appeals.
The court said the visa decision had treated the principles for considering rights under Article 41 of the Constitution as the same as those under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Referring to its reasoning in the related case of Gorry, it said that approach was incorrect and the decision on that issue was not in accordance with law.
The Court of Appeal upheld the quashing of the Minister’s decision. Because of the further applications and the appeal’s mootness, it vacated the part of the High Court order that required the application to be reconsidered. The judgment does not state the outcome of the later applications.