Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell handed down judgment in the High Court on 22 January 2025 on a procedural point in a judicial review case taken by E.A. (the “Applicant”) against the International Appeals Tribunal (IPAT), the Minister for Justice and the Attorney General (the “Respondents”).
The Applicant, a Nigerian national, claimed to have been trafficked from her home country to Ireland, entering the State in 2022 and subsequently applied for international protection. Following an adverse ruling at first instance the applicant appealed to the IPAT in August 2023 and the initial adverse ruling was affirmed by the IPAT in December 2023. The Applicant challenges the credibility assessment of the IPAT in relation to her claim of trafficking.
The Applicant sought leave for judicial review. The Respondents filed opposition papers, arguing that the Applicant’s claim was flawed and the process followed by the IPAT was correct. An official in the Minister’s Immigration Delivery Service provided that, as a non-national, the Applicant may apply for either international protection or they may liaise with the Human Trafficking Investigation and Coordination Unit of An Garda Síochána, but not both.
The Applicant wished to amend the grounds upon which the relief was sought to involve two additional grounds. The new grounds made by the Applicant were (1) there had been no attempt by the IPAT to consider the assessment made by Ruhama which determined that the Applicant had many indicators of a victim of human trafficking, and (2) the system used by the National Referral Mechanism, whereby someone seeking asylum is prevented from being officially recognised as a victim of human trafficking, is against the Directive 2011/36/EU and Article 4 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The Applicant stated these points had not been addressed initially due to an error on the part of the counsel who drafted the proceedings.
The Court noted that the basic criteria are that leave will be permitted to amend to include a new point if said point is arguable, if there is an adequate explanation for the point not having been pleaded originally, and if the other party is not unfairly prejudiced.
The Court determined that the points to be made by the Applicant are arguable, that the explanation for the failure to initially include those points was satisfactory, and that, while the Respondents may suffer some prejudice by the amendments, they are merely logistical. Mr Justice Barry concluded that the application to amend the proceedings should be permitted.
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