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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> High Court of Ireland Decisions >> F.A. -v- Refugee Appeals Tribunal & Ors [2015] IEHC 527 (30 July 2015)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2015/H527.html
Cite as: [2015] IEHC 527
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Judgment
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Neutral Citation [2015] IEHC 527 THE HIGH COURT [2011 No. 912 JR] BETWEEN F. A. APPLICANT AND
REFUGEE APPEALS TRIBUNAL, THE MINISTER FOR JUSTICE AND EQUALITY, THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND IRELAND RESPONDENTS EX TEMPORE JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh delivered on the 30th day of July, 2015 Introduction: 1. This is a telescoped application for judicial review arising from the negative determination by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal of the applicant’s appeal against a negative recommendation from the Refugee Applications Commissioner. The applicant is approximately 44 years of age. She is the mother of four children. She is a widow whose partner, the father of her daughters, died in 1999. She claimed to have arrived in Ireland in mid December, 2010. She was selling goods in a market in Benin City in Nigeria accompanied by her children. A woman named Rita Amara approached her and asked her why her children were not at school. She explained she could not afford to send them to school. The woman offered to help her and some months later returned to her saying she would bring her to Europe to work as a child minder and a cleaner. This woman accompanied the applicant to Ireland where she minded Ms. Amara’s children. A Nigerian man named Valentine was the father of the children. She was told that she owed €40,000.00 for her travel to Ireland and that she would be required to work for the couple to repay this money. After four months of child minding she was told she would be required to work as a prostitute. Valentine threatened to find her children and harm them if she did not cooperate. 2. The applicant sought asylum by completing the relevant questionnaire on the 17th May, 2011. She was assisted in completing the questionnaire because she says she is illiterate. She attended an interview with the O.R.A.C. on the 13th June, 2011. She stated that the reason she did not wish to go back to Nigeria was because she was afraid of Rita and Valentine as they were threatening her. A s. 13 report was issued on the 21st July, 2011. Several negative credibility findings were made, in particular, it was noted that the applicant could not provide the names of the children she was minding; she stated the names of the children were strange and that she had not heard them before. The report says at para. 4.3 (a):-
3. During the course of the processing of the claim for asylum the applicant made contact with the Gardaí in respect of the allegation that she was the victim of trafficking. In this regard, the O.R.A.C. was contacted by the Refugee Legal Service by letter of the 8th August, 2011, which enclosed a letter from the G.N.I.B. (Garda National Immigration Bureau) to the Refugee Legal Service. The Gardaí sent a form entitled “Notice of Potential Victim of Human Trafficking to the Legal Aid Board”. The form states:-
4. By letter of the 6th September, 2011, the applicant’s solicitors wrote to the R.A.T. saying:-
Decision of the R.A.T.: 5. The tribunal member briefly stated the basis of the applicant’s claim for asylum. In respect of the correspondence about trafficking the tribunal member said:-
6. Section 5 of the R.A.T. decision is entitled “analysis of the applicant’s claim” and is nine pages in length. Two relatively short paragraphs of the analysis of the applicant’s claim express the tribunal member’s rejection of her credibility in the following terms:-
The Applicant states that she did not know the nationality of the passport she used to travel to this State (p8, interview) nor was she aware of the name or date of birth on this passport. It is difficult to understand why Rita would have allowed the Applicant to embark on international travel with such limited information about her travel details - had the Applicant been questioned at any point her lack of knowledge of her purported identity for her travel would have caused serious problems for the Applicant and Rita. Section 11 B(c) of the Refugee Act, 1996 (as amended) is relevant to this claim.”
9. In order to understand what complaint was being made about the manner in which the tribunal approached the evidence as to the attitude of the G.N.I.B., I enquired of counsel what use should the tribunal member have made of this information. Counsel said that the tribunal ought to have referred this matter to the O.R.A.C. for further investigation to see what had become of any Garda investigation into the claim. In my view, there was no legal obligation on the tribunal to enquire as to what had happened in respect of any Garda enquiry. 10. In any event, this was a matter which was of interest to this court in assessing these judicial review proceedings. I was of the view that it might be of use to the parties, and to the court, to discover what, if anything, had happened in respect of a Garda investigation into the allegation of trafficking. It was possible that the Gardaí had conducted an investigation and had found the applicant’s claims to be true and had prosecuted the guilty persons. If this had happened the parties might have reassessed these proceedings and the applicant’s circumstances generally. The proceedings were adjourned to permit the enquiries to be made and the applicant swore a second affidavit on the 8th June, 2015, where she said:-
12. I refuse this application for judicial review.
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