The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by a Pakistani national who argued that his deportation order was unlawful because it did not itself state the date by which he had to leave Ireland.
The appeal concerned the statutory requirement that a deportation order require a non-national to leave the State within a specified period. The appellant argued that the deadline had to appear in the order itself. In his case, the order referred to a period ending on the date specified in a separate notice, while that notice set 3 March 2017 as the deadline.
The court said the appellant received the order, the notice and the Minister’s considerations together. It said there was no dispute that the documents made clear what he was required to do; the challenge concerned their legality.
The appellant asked the Supreme Court to overrule its earlier decision in *FP v The Minister for Justice* [2002] 1 IR 164, which had approved the prescribed form of deportation order despite its not stating a date of effect. The Minister argued that the period was specified by reference to the date in the accompanying notice, and that the order and notice could be read together.
Delivering judgment on 13 March 2018, O’Donnell J said the appellant’s interpretation had some force, but it was not the only possible reading of the law. The court considered the earlier ruling and the principle that the Oireachtas may be presumed to legislate with knowledge of prior judicial interpretation. It concluded that the earlier decision had not been shown to be clearly wrong, or that justice required it to be overruled.
The Supreme Court therefore dismissed the appeal and upheld the High Court’s refusal to grant leave to seek judicial review. It did not determine the underlying deportation decision afresh; the appeal concerned the legal challenge to the order’s form.