A Sudanese woman has won her appeal against a decision by then Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, to refuse her Irish citizenship on ‘good character’ grounds.
In a judgment delivered by Ms Justice Baker, the Court of Appeal found that the High Court had erred in refusing judicial review of the Minister’s decision and that the decision should be quashed. The Court found that it was unreasonable for the Minister to rely on a finding of an absence of good character from several years earlier to come to the current decision.
The applicant had applied for asylum in Ireland in 2006 and was refused. Since then, she had married a man, also from Sudan, who had Irish citizenship. As she was entitled to a right of residence based on this marriage, she withdrew her asylum application and applied for naturalisation. In 2016, this application was refused by the Minister for Justice on the basis that there has been a finding of an absence of good character and a lack of credibility during her asylum application process in 2006. This finding was made because she had returned to Sudan in November 2006 to visit her family for a period of two months. In addition, the passport on which she relied to ground her naturalisation application was allegedly “issued based on incorrect information.”
When seeking judicial review of the Minister’s decision, the applicant argued that she was being held to an unreasonable standard of good character, which did not have regard for her personal circumstances. She argued that the fact that she had returned to Sudan four years after getting residency in Ireland was insufficient to find a lack of credibility. She also highlighted that insufficient weight was given to the fact that she had reached Ireland with the assistance of people smugglers and had not actually seen the passport application herself.
In allowing the appeal from the High Court decision, Judge Baker explained that the correct approach was to consider whether the Minister’s decision was “factually sustainable, not unreasonable and not made in reliance on irrelevant considerations”. The Court found that it was unreasonable for the Minister to rely on a finding of an absence of good character from several years earlier. There was also no analysis of why asylum was sought, the basis of refusal, the change of circumstances in Sudan and whether the applicant’s marriage and the birth of her children may have had an impact on her decision to return to Sudan. The conclusion of the Minister was drawn from facts that occurred in the past and prejudiced her naturalisation application. The passage of time between the finding of a lack of credibility and the current decision, and the lack of information surrounding that original decision means that the decision of the Minister was unreasonable and should be quashed.