The Court of Appeal has dismissed UM’s appeal against decisions refusing his application for an Irish passport. The court held that the residence of his father, MM, did not count toward the three-year residence requirement for UM to claim Irish citizenship because MM’s refugee declaration and residence permission had been obtained through false and misleading information.
UM was born in Galway on 1 June 2013. He argued that his father had been resident in the State for at least three years during the four years before his birth, meeting the condition in the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956 for citizenship by birth to a child of non-national parents.
MM, an Afghan national, arrived in Ireland in April 2005 and was granted refugee status following an appeal. The judgment recounts that he had not disclosed a previous asylum application in the United Kingdom and had changed dates in his Irish application to conceal his time there. In 2013, the Minister revoked his refugee declaration on grounds including that it had been granted on the basis of materially false or misleading information. The evidence that MM’s residence was obtained on a false or fraudulent basis was not disputed in the High Court proceedings.
UM argued that the 1956 Act specifically excluded certain periods from the residence calculation, including time spent in contravention of section 5(1) of the Immigration Act 2004. He said MM held a residence permission and a refugee declaration that remained in force until their revocation, so his father’s time in Ireland should count. The Minister’s position was that the permission and declaration, having been obtained through deception, could not establish reckonable residence.
The Court of Appeal concluded that the revocation of a refugee declaration on the ground that it was obtained through false information meant the declaration was invalid from the outset. It also held that a residence permission obtained through false and misleading information was not a “permission” for the purposes of section 5(1). As a result, the statutory exemption for a person holding a refugee declaration did not apply, and MM’s presence could not be counted toward UM’s claimed citizenship entitlement.
The court stressed that the passport decision was an inquiry into whether UM was an Irish citizen, not a revocation of citizenship. It dismissed the appeal. The court indicated that costs would normally follow the outcome and proposed to make that order after 14 days unless a party applied for a different order within that period.