Nateel Ors -v- MJRLR Anor
Neutral citation (2011) IEHC 392
High Court
Judgment was delivered on October 7th, 2011, by Mr Justice Gerard Hogan.
Judgment
A decision of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal to refuse an asylum application from a Palestinian woman was quashed by the High Court and her application remitted for reconsideration.
Background
The woman is a Palestinian who lived in the Gaza Strip until 2009 with her four children, one of whom is an Irish national, as he was born in Belfast in 2003. She worked as a teacher.
Her husband is director general of a non-governmental organisation, the Society Voice Foundation (SVA). In 2005 the husband began studying for a PhD at Coventry University, so has permission to live in Britain and can travel freely between it and Ireland, which he does.
When Israel launched an offensive against the Gaza Strip in 2008, the Department of Foreign Affairs, on becoming aware the life of a young Irish national (the applicant’s five-year- old son) was in danger, arranged for the family to be flown to Dublin via Cairo.
It seemed to be envisaged that some form of residency status would be acquired by the family, but this did not materialise and Suha Nateel then applied for refugee status for herself and her three non-Irish children. This was refused by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal on credibility grounds.
Ms Nateel’s claim for asylum centred on her work with the SVA, which counselled young female students on issues bearing on family life, including the role of women, the wearing of Islamic dress and domestic violence.
She maintained this was viewed with deep suspicion by the ruling Hamas party and she was dismissed from her teaching post. She also stated the SVA office had been closed by Hamas and her family home attacked by it.
In rejecting her claim, the tribunal member laid great stress on the fact Ms Nateel’s husband had failed to claim asylum.
However, Mr Justice Hogan said Mr Nateel had fully explained his failure to do so on the basis he was lawfully in the State and in Britain and did not require a declaration of refugee status.
Additionally, had he done so, he would have been unable to travel between Britain and Ireland to pursue his studies and maintain contact with his family while awaiting a decision. It would also have made it impossible for him to travel to various conferences as director general of SVA.
Decision
“It is a perfectly valid and completely tenable explanation,” Mr Justice Hogan said. “In these circumstances, there was simply no evidential foundation for the tribunal’s conclusion that ‘his explanation for not claiming asylum is [not] credible or well founded’.”
This violated a principle identified by Mr Justice John Cooke that a finding of a lack of credibility must be based on correct facts and the reasons drawn from them must bear a legitimate connection to the adverse finding, he said.
This was a sufficient ground to quash the tribunal’s decision. However, he also commented on other matters raised by the tribunal member. The first related to Mr Nateel’s salary from the NGO. “It is far from clear how the amount of Mr Nateel’s salary was in any way relevant to any issue which was before the tribunal member,” he said.
The second concerned a newspaper article in the Irish Daily Mirror, which questioned whether Mr Nateel was actually working in Britain. However, the tribunal member made no reference to a subsequent article in the Irish Daily Mirror which clearly acknowledged he was returning to his post in Britain.
The third concerned the circumstances of the birth of the fourth child in Belfast in 2003, when Ms Nateel travelled from London to Belfast for the birth.
While it seemed difficult to avoid the conclusion the principal motive was to ensure the child would have Irish citizenship, the issue of the child’s citizenship was fundamentally irrelevant to anything the tribunal was required to decide, he said.
For these reasons, Mr Justice Hogan quashed the tribunal’s decision and remitted the matter for fresh consideration.
The full judgment is on courts.ie
Ian Whelan BL, instructed by Burns Kelly Corrigan, for the applicant; Sinéad McGrath BL, instructed by the Chief State Solicitor, for the Minister.