A man arrested and served with a deportation order when he attended an interview at the Department of Justice, yesterday secured a High Court order halting his deportation.
Mr Gerard Hogan SC, with Ms Teresa Blake, for the man, said his client had arrived from Belgium in November 1997 having earlier fled Nigeria as a ship stowaway.
He applied for refugee status but was refused last February and told that under the Dublin Convention his application should be dealt with by Belgium. He appealed but was refused. The convention allows the return of asylum-seekers to the first EU state they arrive in.
The man then received a letter asking him to attend for interview at the Department of Justice last Monday to renew his ID permit. But there was no interview and he was arrested and served with the order. He had been detained at Mountjoy Training Unit and was to be put on a plane to Brussels.
Mr Hogan asked the court to grant leave to challenge the deportation order, by way of judicial review. He would be arguing that Section 5 of the Aliens Act, on the power to issue deportation orders, was not properly carried forward under the Constitution.
He would also contend his client's arrest was achieved by subterfuge and he never had a proper opportunity to challenge the order because of that.
Mr Justice Geoghegan gave leave to seek judicial review on two grounds: that the applicant was not given a proper opportunity to challenge the order; and that there was an arguable case that Section 5 of the Aliens Act was not properly carried forward under the Constitution.
He said he would grant liberty to apply to file additional grounds tomorrow. Granting leave would act as a stay on the order, he added.