The High Court refused leave to seek judicial review of a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing Z. T.’s appeal in his application for refugee status. Mr Justice McCarthy said substantial grounds had not been made out. The court did not grant certiorari or make a final determination on the interpretation of the protection regulations.
The tribunal had dismissed the appeal from a 2006 recommendation that the application for a refugee declaration be refused. Its decision, dated 26 August 2008, considered the applicant’s account of threats, beatings and harassment in Georgia after he joined the Helsinki Union in 1998. The account included a two-week arrest in February 2003, further threats in 2005, and an alleged serious assault in March 2006 after he had gone into hiding. He then left Georgia for Ireland. The judgment also noted a demonstration filmed by the applicant in August 2004 that police broke up, although it was not included in the tribunal’s summary of his case.
The tribunal member assessed whether the alleged treatment amounted to persecution, relying in part on a formulation that described persecution as constant and unrelenting harassment. In the High Court, it was argued that Regulation 9 of the 2006 protection regulations allowed a sufficiently serious single incident to qualify as an act of persecution, as well as an accumulation of measures. The judge said he was not required at the leave stage to reach a final view on how those regulations should be interpreted.
The court considered that the applicant relied on a series of incidents, not solely on the March 2006 assault. The tribunal had considered the complaints cumulatively and found they did not amount to persecution under the test it applied. The judge reasoned that, on these facts, even if a different legal test were used, a tribunal could rationally reach the same conclusion. He said that if the incidents taken together did not meet the threshold, he could not see how a single incident standing alone would do so in this case.
A second ground alleged that the decision maker failed to consider the implications of past events for the applicant if returned to Georgia. The judge said Regulation 5(2) treated past persecution as evidence of a well-founded fear of future persecution, but considered that provision irrelevant if there had been no past persecution. A further ground concerning political activities and country-of-origin information was not pursued, according to the judgment.
The court’s decision was limited to whether substantial grounds for judicial review had been shown. It refused leave; it did not determine the applicant’s entitlement to refugee status or finally settle the regulations’ meaning.