S.I. (Bangladesh) v Minister for Justice & Equality

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: Mr. Justice Richard Humphreys
• Judgment Date: 08 October 2019
• Neutral Citation: [2019] IEHC 706
• Docket Number: [2019 No. 14 J.R.]
• Court: High Court
• Date: 08 October 2019

[2019] IEHC 706

THE HIGH COURT

JUDICIAL REVIEW

Richard Humphreys

[2019 No. 14 J.R.]

BETWEEN

S.I. (BANGLADESH)

APPLICANT

AND

THE MINISTER FOR JUSTICE AND EQUALITY

RESPONDENT

Leave to appeal – Judicial review – Immigration Act 2004 – Applicant seeking leave to appeal – Whether there was a benefit to the matter being re-agitated at appellate level

Facts: Humphreys J, in Kant v Minister for Justice and Equality [2019] IEHC 583 (Unreported, High Court, 22nd July, 2019), dismissed two sets of judicial review proceedings. The applicant in the second of those cases applied for leave to appeal. The first and second proposed questions raised the issue of the interpretation of the Immigration Act 2004. The third question was a new point that occurred to the applicant after the substantive judgment following the CJEU decision in Case-94/18 Chenchooliah v Minister for Justice and Equality (10th September, 2019).

Held by Humphreys J that the core aspects of the first and second proposed questions had already been decided upon by both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court as set out in the substantive judgment in Kant, so there was no particular benefit to the matter being re-agitated at appellate level. Humphreys J held that the fact that the applicant had come up with an inventive but implausible argument to circumvent that jurisprudence by asserting that permission under the European Communities (Free Movement of Persons) Regulations 2015 (S.I. No. 548 of 2015) is not permission under the 2015 regulations at all but rather is somehow permission under the 2004 Act did not convert the case into one of exceptional or indeed any public importance or render that existing appellate court jurisprudence irrelevant. Humphreys J held that this was not a good case to raise the third question because the point was not argued at the substantive hearing; that would make an appellate court into a court of first instance which is in principle constitutionally improper.

Humphreys J held that the application would be refused.

Application for leave to appeal refused.

JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Richard Humphreys delivered on the 8th day of October, 2019

1 In Kant v. Minister for Justice and Equality [2019] IEHC 583 [2019] 7 JIC 2207 (Unreported, High Court, 22nd July, 2019), I dismissed two sets of judicial review proceedings. Mr. Colm O'Dwyer S.C. (with Ms. Leanora Frawley B.L.) for the applicants in the second of those cases...