The High Court has refused to restrain the Minister for Justice from deporting a Nigerian woman and her six-year-old twin children.
The application had been made by Olivia Agbonlahor, her son Great Agbonlahor and her daughter Melissa Agbonlahor.
Conor Power told the court that the family was seeking an injunction restraining their imminent deportation on the grounds that the Minister had erred in law and had failed to grant them the benefit of 2006 EU regulations governing the handling of applications for refugee status.
Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan refused to stop the deportation, firstly because he considered Ms Agbonlahor had not established substantial and arguable grounds which would allow her a reasonable prospect of success in a new legal challenge to the Minister's decision.
He also refused to block the deportation on grounds that recent European Union law granted her family subsidiary protection while a new application for refugee status would be considered on the basis of fresh information never previously considered by the Refugee Applications Commissioner.
Mr Power, who appeared with Kevin Brophy for the Agbonlahors, said the family were the subject of deportation orders and were required to present themselves for deportation at the Garda National Immigration Bureau yesterday at noon.
Ms Agbonlahor, in an affidavit, stated that Great Agbonlahor suffered from autism, a mental health condition and disability, and she feared that because of how such sufferers were treated in Nigeria the family, particularly her son, would be at risk of serious harm.
Severe discrimination because of membership of a social group, including those comprising people with a medical condition and disability, could constitute persecution under the Refugee Convention.
The Minister had said that a medical condition was not of itself a convention ground for the granting of refugee status.