The High Court has refused an anonymised applicant’s judicial review of a decision that he was not eligible for subsidiary protection in Ireland. Mr Justice David Keane rejected the challenge on its merits and said it was therefore unnecessary to decide whether the court should extend the time for bringing the proceedings.
The case concerned a May 2016 decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT), then known as the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. It had affirmed a recommendation that the applicant should not receive subsidiary protection, finding that his claims were not credible and that there were no substantial grounds to believe he would face a real risk of serious harm if returned to Bangladesh.
The applicant, a Bangladeshi national born in 1969, claimed he was a member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and feared persecution by members of the Bangladesh Awami League. He said he had been assaulted before leaving Bangladesh and would be killed if he returned. The Commissioner had recommended against subsidiary protection in November 2014, and the tribunal heard his appeal in March 2016.
The applicant raised four main issues in the judicial review: the standard of proof for past events, the assessment of his credibility, the tribunal’s reasons, and its treatment of internal relocation. The judge rejected the argument that the tribunal had applied the wrong standard of proof, relying on earlier High Court authority that the balance of probabilities, coupled where appropriate with the benefit of the doubt, was the applicable standard.
On credibility, Mr Justice Keane said the tribunal had given a reasoned assessment of inconsistencies and contradictions in the applicant’s accounts and considered his explanations. He found no basis for the claim that the tribunal had relied on instinct or ignored relevant information. The judge also concluded that the tribunal had given reasons for rejecting the account, including its consideration of the applicant’s hearing difficulties, limited education and the time that had passed since the events he described.
The internal relocation issue did not require a ruling on the competing legal approaches discussed in earlier cases, the judge said. The tribunal had made unequivocal adverse credibility findings and found no substantial basis to believe the applicant faced a real risk of serious harm. It had considered relocation only as part of its credibility assessment, not as a separate assessment of whether adequate state protection was available. Any dispute over the legal test for such a separate assessment was therefore moot in this case.
The respondents had argued that the proceedings were outside the statutory 28-day limit. The judge did not determine that issue because he had rejected the application on its merits. He refused the application for judicial review.