The High Court has refused a Somali refugee’s judicial review challenge to the Minister for Justice’s request for her husband’s original passport in a family reunification application.
The substantive hearing concerned an application for judicial review seeking mandamus and declaratory relief. The applicant had argued that requiring passports was irrational because the Minister’s stated policy did not treat Somali embassy documents as reliable proof of identity. At the hearing, her counsel accepted that the Minister had not refused to decide the reunification application and that the delay did not establish a legal basis for mandamus.
The applicant was granted refugee status in May 2008. She applied for reunification in June 2009 with her husband, two sons and elderly mother, who she said were living in Ethiopia as undocumented refugees. The application included documents said to be marriage and birth certificates, a medical report about her mother and evidence of money transfers. The Minister’s department later sought further documents, including passports and identity evidence, and said DNA evidence might also be required.
In a letter on 2 September 2011, the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service said the husband’s passport was required to help establish that the man who married the applicant was the same person as the children’s father. It said DNA evidence might be required to establish paternity. The court noted that the Minister could not compel the family to provide DNA samples.
Justice Cooke said the Minister was entitled to require reasonably verifiable proof of the claimed identities and family relationships. He found that requesting a Somali passport was not irrational or unreasonable, even though its authenticity could be in doubt, because it could form one part of a wider assessment and might allow an Irish representative to check whether the person had presented at the Somali embassy in Addis Ababa. The passport would not, by itself, establish identity; its weight would depend on the other evidence.
The court rejected mandamus because the applicant had previously asked the department to wait while further documents were obtained, and the September 2011 letter showed the application was still being processed rather than refused. It also refused the requested declaratory relief and concluded that none of the claims for which leave had been granted was made out.
The judgment did not decide whether the applicant’s family members qualified for reunification. The Minister’s substantive decision on that application remained outstanding in the account given by the judgment.