High CourtH -v- MJELR Anor: Judgment was given on July 17th, 2009, by Mr Justice McMahon Judgment: A finding of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, upheld by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, that the omission of one piece of information about a minor's home town fundamentally undermined her story, and which was not put to the applicant, was fundamentally flawed. The decision to deny her refugee status should therefore be quashed.
Background
The applicant was born to Eritrean parents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on December 12th, 1989, and lived there until she was 10. Her family moved to Eritrea during the war between this country and Ethiopia. She claimed she and her parents were persecuted there as Pentecostal Protestants.
She arrived in Ireland as an unaccompanied minor aged 16 in September 2006 and applied for asylum. She was interviewed by a Refugee Applications Commissioner in November 2006, just short of her 17th birthday. In January the commissioner decided she should not be declared a refugee. This decision was upheld by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal.
She took judicial review proceedings of the decision in the High Court, which were heard on July 9th last. Among her grounds for challenging the decision were the claim that in deciding that she did not have adequate knowledge of the Eritrean town of Assab, and that this fundamentally undermined her claim, the commissioner failed to consider the accurate information she provided about Assab and Eritrea.
She also claimed that the commissioner had not applied a liberal benefit of the doubt to her as a minor applicant, or taken her age and individual circumstances into account, and that he failed to take into account country of origin information concerning the detention of people in Eritrea for religious reasons.
Mr Justice McMahon quoted the questions asked at the interview and the answers given by the applicant, relating to the town of Assab where she said she lived. The commissioner had concluded that she did not “display any knowledge it would be reasonable to expect of a resident who had lived there for six years”. The commissioner drew specific attention to her failure to mention islands in the bay near the town, which “are visible from the shore”.
Decision
Mr Justice McMahon said: “I have great difficulty in agreeing with the conclusion which the authorised officer was prepared to make from the scanty information downloaded from the internet.”
He said the map downloaded gave no detailed outline of the topography of the city; the conclusion that the islands were visible from the shore “is seriously suspect”.
“I do not know how this conclusion can be drawn with any certainty,” he said.
He added that in any case this was not relevant, as what was relevant was whether they were visible from where the applicant lived, which was not on the shore.
Given the level of answering which she gave in relation to the other questions asked about Assab, he said it was unreasonable for the authorised officer to conclude that the visibility or otherwise of the islands would lead one to believe that Assab was not her place of habitual residence prior to coming to Ireland.
The same criticisms could be levelled against the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, who said that her failure to mention the islands alone “fundamentally undermines” her story that she lived in Assab.
Finally, if such an adverse finding was to be made against her, it should have been put to her, which was not done.
His finding on this ground, Mr Justice McMahon said, was so basic as to taint the whole process, and he held the conclusion to be unreasonable and irrational. He made an order of certiorari quashing the decision of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal to reject her appeal.
Turning to the other grounds of her challenge, he said the tribunal member had stated he did apply a liberal interpretation of the rules governing an application from an unaccompanied minor. He had no reason to believe he had not done so. He also rejected her argument concerning the country of origin information.
However, his finding on the issue of her knowledge of Assab, where he held the decision of the tribunal to be unreasonable and irrational, could not be cured by these findings.
Colm O’Dwyer BL, instructed by the Refugee Legal Service, for the applicant; Daniel Donnolly BL, instructed by the Chief State Solicitor, for the Minister
The full judgment is on www.courts.ie