On 12 December 2012, the Irish Supreme Court in Sulaimon v Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform dismissed the Minister for Justice’s appeal against a High Court judgment overturning the Minister’s refusal to issue a Certificate of Nationality.
The Court found that residency permission is effective from the date of the letter from the Minister granting permission to reside and not from the date of registration with the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) as was the policy of the Department to date.
Faisol Oluwanifemi Sulaimon was born to Nigerian parents in 2008. His father applied on his behalf for an Irish passport but was refused on grounds that he did not satisfy the terms of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. Under the Act, a parent must be lawfully resident in Ireland for three of the four years preceding the child’s birth. The department maintained that the father was three days short of this rule.
The department argued that the date of lawful residency began when the father’s passport was stamped by the relevant immigration officer and he was registered under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. The father argued that his lawful residency ran from when he got a letter informing him that the Minister had granted him permission to lawfully reside in Ireland.
The High Court, by way of judicial review, found that the child was entitled to a Certificate of Nationality on grounds that the father had fulfilled the requisite time period. The Minister for Justice appealed the decision.
The Supreme Court dismissed the Minister’s appeal and confirmed that the father’s first permission was operative from when he received the letter saying that the Minister had granted him permission to reside.
The five judge Supreme Court was critical of the government’s bureaucratic application of the rules “to the exclusion of common sense and justice” and stated that “It is dispiriting to see State litigation conducted in this way at public expense.”
Following the judgment, the Irish Immigrant Support Centre, Nasc, called upon the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) to immediately issue correct guidelines to ensure that migrants legally resident are not denied Irish citizenship “on foot of a clearly mistaken view of the law”. Nasc further requested that the residency calculator on the INIS website be immediately amended in line with the Supreme Court decision.
Click here to read the judgment in full