The High Court has awarded costs to an anonymised Somali applicant after the International Protection Appeals Tribunal agreed that its decision finding his international protection application inadmissible should be quashed.
Mr Justice Sean Gillane delivered the costs ruling on 24 October 2025. The underlying IPAT decision had been made on 11 December 2023 and was followed by a further determination and direction on 8 January 2024.
The applicant had previously been granted refugee status in Greece as an unaccompanied minor in October 2021 before later applying for international protection in Ireland.
A central issue arose during his Irish appeal. IPAT sent his solicitor an email on 27 November 2023 containing questions seeking further information. The tribunal's system showed the message reaching the solicitor's inbound mail gateway and being queued for delivery. However, the High Court accepted that, for an unexplained technical reason, it did not reach the solicitor's inbox.
As a result, the applicant never saw the questions. IPAT subsequently recorded in its decision that no response had been received.
The applicant sought judicial review in January 2024, specifically arguing that he had been denied fair procedures because he had never received the questions he was said to have failed to answer.
Once the position was investigated during the proceedings, IPAT accepted that the applicant had not refused to provide information he had never seen. In October 2024, the respondents offered to consent to an order quashing the decision while proposing that each side bear its own costs.
The only issue left for the High Court was costs.
Mr Justice Gillane found that neither side had acted improperly: IPAT had sent the email in good faith, while the applicant was understandably unaware of it. But the principal relief sought was certiorari, and that relief had ultimately been conceded.
The judge therefore applied the normal rule that costs follow the event and awarded the applicant his costs.