The High Court refused a seven-year-old boy leave to bring a third judicial review challenge to the refusal to revoke a deportation order, and discharged an injunction restraining his deportation.
In a judgment delivered on 14 November 2016, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the applicant had not shown substantial grounds to challenge the Minister for Justice and Equality’s decision of 29 July 2016. The ruling concerned permission to bring judicial review proceedings; it was not a final hearing determining the lawfulness of the refusal.
The applicant, identified as D.E., was born in Ireland to a mother of Nigerian parentage and has sickle cell disease. The court recounted that an earlier challenge to his deportation order was refused leave in 2012. A second judicial review, against a refusal to revoke the order, was struck out in 2014 after an updated medical report was treated by the department as a further application to revoke. The decision on that further application led to the present case.
The applicant argued that the Government was pursuing an informal approach to regularising the status of some people who had been in Ireland for more than five years, but that the criteria lacked transparency. His counsel also argued that the mother had not known that her evasion of immigration authorities could be treated as relevant to her child, limiting the chance to make submissions.
The judge found no substantial grounds to argue that the Minister had to publish a full policy statement. He also said the applicant had sufficient notice that evasion could be an issue, and that it was open to his representatives to explain the circumstances. The court said there was no legal bar to treating a child’s position as derivative from a parent’s for this purpose.
On medical access, the judgment considered a 2014 report describing the boy’s condition as “really quite severe” and saying he needed more than basic care. The judge said this did not establish substantial grounds that the high threshold for challenging removal on medical grounds had been met, and that assessment of the medical material was initially for the Minister.
The court also rejected the Article 8 ECHR ground at the leave stage, noting the applicant’s unlawful or precarious immigration status and that the working group recommendations did not bind the Government. The application for leave was refused. The matter was adjourned to allow any application for leave to appeal, which was to be made on notice to the respondents; the applicant was ordered to serve the Chief State Solicitor’s Office with the judgment within seven days.