N.E. (Georgia) v The International Appeals Tribunal

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: Mr. Justice Richard Humphreys
• Judgment Date: 21 October 2019
• Neutral Citation: [2019] IEHC 700
• Docket Number: [2018 No. 917 J.R.]
• Court: High Court
• Date: 21 October 2019

[2019] IEHC 700

THE HIGH COURT

JUDICIAL REVIEW

Richard Humphreys

[2018 No. 917 J.R.]

BETWEEN

N.E. (GEORGIA)

APPLICANT

AND

THE INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION APPEALS TRIBUNAL, THE MINISTER FOR JUSTICE AND EQUALITY, THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

AND

IRELAND

RESPONDENTS

Judicial review – Permission to remain – Protection claim – Applicant seeking an order of certiorari of the respondent’s decision – Whether adverse credibility findings were irrational and perverse

Facts: The applicant, a Georgian national, left her home country on 7th August, 2008 and travelled to Italy where she purchased a false Lithuanian passport. She then came to Ireland on 16th August, 2008 on that false passport. She remained in the State without seeking to regularise her status for a period of nearly seven years. She applied for asylum on 18th May, 2015 under her true identity. Her protection claim was deemed abandoned and was refused by the second respondent, the Minister for Justice and Equality, and she was so notified on 29th April, 2016. On 12th December, 2016, the applicant applied for permission to make a re-application under s. 17 of the Refugee Act 1996, and on 16th May, 2017 the International Protection Office (IPO) replied stating that a new application form was required under s. 22 of the International Protection Act 2015. On 12th December, 2016, the applicant made an application under s. 22 of the 2015 Act and on 9th August, 2017 that application was granted by the Minister. On 3rd May, 2018 the IPO wrote to the applicant stating that her protection claim and her application for permission to remain under s. 49 of the 2015 Act had been refused. On 23rd May, 2018 the applicant submitted a notice of appeal to the first respondent, the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT), and an oral hearing took place on 30th July, 2018. On 3rd October, 2018, the applicant was written to and informed that the tribunal had rejected the appeal in a decision dated 2nd October, 2018. The applicant received the decision on 8th October, 2018 and proceedings were filed on 7th November, 2018. The High Court (Humphreys J) granted leave on 12th November, 2018, the primary relief sought being an order of certiorari of the tribunal decision.

Held by Humphreys J that the fact that the applicant gave an approximately correct answer to question 38 (how often the newspaper she worked on was published) was held against her at para. 4.8 of the decision was simply irrational and unreasonable. He held that the fact that her inability to state the precise year regarding the date of foundation of the newspaper was held against her by the tribunal member was irrational and unreasonable in the circumstances. He held that a test of setting the bar at the level of the security features of a passport in order for a document to be given weight was simply absurd. He held that the fact that the applicant’s identity card was not easily falsifiable was not in any way acknowledged by the tribunal and its decision was infirm on that ground. Noting that the applicant decided to come forward herself with her true identity, he held that in such a context, delay is considerably less damning than where it is coupled with an extrinsic development. He held that this was a distinction which the tribunal member failed to understand, or even acknowledge and that failure to do so was a departure from the correct reasoning process. He held that while it is true that, as a general proposition, any individual item of evidence submitted by an applicant does not automatically call for a narrative discussion, the rejection of the applicant’s claim to have been a journalist in the circumstances of the case did call for some acknowledgment of the additional evidence potentially significantly supportive of that account, an account that was not particularly problematic on its face.

Humphreys J held that the appropriate order would be one of certiorari removing for the purpose of being quashed the IPAT decision and remitting the applicant’s appeal to be reconsidered by a different tribunal member.

Relief granted.

JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Richard Humphreys delivered on the 21st day of October, 2019

1 Anyone who has read Orwell's Animal Farm (London, 1945), particularly if they did so at an impressionable age, will have their own candidate for the scene that lives most vividly in the memory. A strong contender on anybody's reading is the episode in Chapter VII where Napoleon has four pigs seized and “called upon them to confess their crimes”. Having done so, they and other confessing animals “were all slain on the spot”. Like Orwell's pitiless protagonist, the Department of Justice and Equality in the present case has not altogether appreciated the potential distinction between visiting stern consequences on wrongdoing that officialdom has uncovered, and humanely affording at least some credit in the case of undiscovered wrongdoing that a person voluntarily discloses themselves.

2 The applicant is a Georgian national born in that country in 1978. Her account of persecution in her home country was that she worked as a journalist with a Georgian newspaper and that as a result of that work she attracted the adverse attention of the Georgian authorities. She stated that she had been badly beaten by government agents In or around March, 2004 and continues to suffer serious injuries as a result.

3 On 7th August, 2008, she left her home country and travelled to Italy where she purchased a false Lithuanian passport. She then came to Ireland on 16th August, 2008 on that false passport. She remained in the State without seeking to regularise her status for a period of nearly seven years. As put in the applicant's submissions, “as the years passed she eventually found the confidence to disclose her true identity and seek protection”. She applied for asylum on 18th May, 2015 under her true identity.

4 She set out details of her facial injuries, stating that her nose was broken and she had to have nose surgery and eye surgery, and that she has no sight in her left eye. She added that “I miss my parents and my daughter [A] who was 8 when I left her”. A protection Interview was scheduled for 22nd December, 2015 and she...