The High Court has struck out a man’s case in which he claimed there had been an unreasonable delay in dealing with his application for Irish citizenship.
The man, who was not named, claimed the Minister for Justice must make a decision on his application within a specified period of time.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons said the man had not provided a properly completed Garda vetting form to allow the Minister to make a decision.
In those circumstances, he said, the Minister was entitled to an order striking out the man’s judicial review proceedings as having been brought prematurely.
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The judge said the man, originally from Nigeria, applied for citizenship in August 2020 but by January 2022, when no decision had been made, his solicitor wrote to the Department of Justice saying if a decision was not made within 21 days he would bring judicial review proceedings.
The department replied there was now a waiting time of 24 months for completion of citizenship applications and he was asked to fill in a Garda vetting form, which was submitted.
However, there was an error in the way he filled in the form and he was asked to fill in a new one, which was returned, following two requests from the department, in March 2022.
But a month before this he sought leave to bring judicial review proceedings, notwithstanding that the properly completed vetting form had not yet been submitted, the judge said.
A further difficulty arose at this point when the department raised a concern about the validity of the Nigerian passport he had provided as part of his Irish citizenship application. It wrote to him asking him to explain why a “false [Nigerian] passport” had been submitted.
However, he claimed a new passport had been issued by the Nigerian authorities. His solicitors also stopped representing him and he dealt with the court case as a litigant in person.
Two years later, in March of this year, after no further steps were taken to progress his legal challenge, the Minister asked the court to strike out his proceedings as being premature or an abuse of process. The man opposed the Minister’s application.
In a judgment, Mr Justice Simons said no decision-maker could reasonably be expected to make a decision in circumstances where an applicant has not yet provided all of the documentation requested, subject to certain exceptions.
In this case, the Minister sought the vetting document which would allow her to determine if he was of good character and this was an entirely reasonable request, he said.
The department wrote to him on a number of occasions and a properly completed form was ultimately submitted in March 2022.
Crucially, however, he sought to bring judicial review proceedings before he submitted the form. It meant a piece of crucial documentation was missing for the Minister to make a decision at the same time as he was seeking an order from the court, he said.
It is essential that, as of the date of the institution of judicial review proceedings, an applicant must have complied with all of the requirements of the decision-maker, he said.
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