In a judgment with major implications for the work of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, the Supreme Court has ruled that people appearing before the tribunal should have access to its previous decisions. The tribunal's refusal to release the decisions breached fair procedures, the five-judge court unanimously found.
Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan remarked that he "would have assumed" that fair procedures "would have required access to and reference to previous decisions in the interest of consistency in the treatment and application of the law".
He was giving the court's judgment dismissing the State's appeal against a High Court decision that the refusal of the tribunal to make available to applicants before it relevant tribunal decisions was a breach of the applicant's rights to fair procedures and of natural and constitutional justice under Article 40.3 of the Constitution.
Mr Justice Geoghegan said the proceedings, brought by three applicants for refugee status, raised "a point of great importance".
One of the applicants claimed he had fled from Bulgaria because he feared persecution and discrimination because of his homosexuality, the second claimed that if she was sent back to Nigeria her daughter would be subjected to female circumcision, while the third applicant from Cameroon claimed she would be subjected to a forced marriage if deported there.
Solicitors for all three had sought access on behalf of their clients to previous relevant decisions of the tribunal but were refused. The tribunal claimed that section 19 of the Refugee Act 1996, as inserted by the Immigration Act 1993, prevented disclosure of any previous decision to protect the identity of those involved. The three applicants were successful in their challenge to that finding in the High Court but the State and the tribunal appealed the High Court ruling to the Supreme Court.
Mr Justice Geoghegan said that section 19 of the 1996 Act had no relevance to the issue of whether or not there was a duty to provide access to edited previous decisions, which would not breach the confidentiality of those involved.
Dealing with the Immigration Act 2003, the judge said the new section reinforced the confidentiality area but assumed that some decisions would be published but edited to remove any danger of identifying a particular applicant.
The judge said the court's judgment related only to the rights of applicants who had requested access to relevant previous decisions in advance of a tribunal hearing and who had been refused. The judgment only concerned the rights of people appearing before the tribunal, he added.