A M C v The Refugee Appeals Tribunal

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: Clarke C.J.,Dunne J.,O'Malley J.
• Judgment Date: 18 April 2019
• Neutral Citation: [2019] IESCDET 88
• Court: Supreme Court
• Date: 18 April 2019

[2019] IESCDET 88

THE SUPREME COURT

DETERMINATION

Clarke C.J.

Dunne J.

O'Malley J.

BETWEEN

A M C (MOZAMBIQUE)

APPLICANT

AND

THE REFUGEE APPEALS TRIBUNAL THE MINISTER FOR JUSTICE AND EQUALITY IRELAND

AND

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

RESPONDENTS

AND IN THE MATTER OF SECTION 5 OF THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS (TRAFFICKING) ACT 2000 (AS AMENDED)

APPLICATION FOR LEAVE TO APPEAL TO WHICH ARTICLE 34.5.4° OF THE CONSTITUTION APPLIES

RESULT: The Court does not grant leave to the Applicant to appeal to this Court directly from the High Court.

REASONS GIVEN:

ORDER SOUGHT TO BE APPEALED

COURT: High Court

DATE OF JUDGMENT OR RULING: 9 th July, 2018

DATE OF ORDER: 9 th July, 2018

DATE OF PERFECTION OF ORDER: 10 th July, 2018

THE APPLICATION FOR LEAVE TO APPEAL WAS MADE ON 2 nd August, 2018 AND WAS IN TIME.

General Considerations

1 The general principles applied by this Court in determining whether to grant or refuse leave to appeal having regard to the criteria incorporated into the Constitution as a result of the 33 ^rd Amendment have now been considered in a large number of determinations and are fully addressed in both a determination issued by a panel consisting of all of the members of this Court in B.S. v Director of Public Prosecutions [2017] IESCDET 134 and in a unanimous judgment of a full Court delivered by O'Donnell J. in Price Waterhouse Coopers (A Firm) v Quinn Insurance Ltd. (Under Administration) [2017] IESC 73. The additional criteria required to be met in order that a so-called “leapfrog appeal” direct from the High Court to this Court can be permitted were addressed by a full panel of the Court in Wansboro v Director of Public Prosecutions (2017) IESCDET 115. Accordingly it is unnecessary to revisit the new constitutional architecture for the purpose of this determination.

2 The application for leave filed, and the respondent's notice thereto, are published along with this determination (subject only to any redaction required by law) and it is therefore unnecessary to set out the position of the parties in detail.

Background

3 The applicant in this matter applied for refugee status in April 2014. The application was unsuccessful, as was an appeal to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. He then sought relief by way of judicial review on the basis that the tribunal had failed to give proper probative weight to medical reports obtained in this State and to a purported death certificate from Mozambique relating to his father, as well as one other ground not the subject of this application for leave to appeal. According to the High Court judgment the death certificate gave the cause of his father's death as ‘attack by RENAMO’.

4 Essentially, the applicant's case was that he had been captured by the RENAMO rebel group and had been subjected to physical and sexual abuse before escaping.

5 Relief was refused by the High Court (Humphreys J. – see A.M.C. (Mozambique) v The Refugee Appeals Tribunal [2018] 133). In summary, the trial judge ruled that the applicant's credibility was ‘left in tatters’ having regard to some thirteen findings, not impugned in the proceedings, made by the tribunal; that the tribunal had considered all of the reports and documents submitted; that the reports had been properly evaluated and did not establish the truth of the applicant's account; that the issue of how the tribunal should evaluate a document such as a death certificate was governed by the decision of the Court of Appeal in A.O. v Refugee Appeals Tribunal [2017] IECA 51 as discussed in the trial judge's own subsequent judgment in ...