Background
The applicant, a 50-year-old woman from Georgia, sought judicial review of an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision affirming the refusal of refugee and subsidiary-protection declarations. IPAT accepted that she had suffered domestic violence from her husband, had a well-founded fear of persecution, and belonged to a particular social group comprising victims of gender-based or domestic violence.
IPAT nevertheless concluded that effective, non-temporary state protection was available in Georgia. It relied on country-of-origin information showing reforms and protection mechanisms, while recognising continuing shortcomings. The applicant challenged that conclusion, arguing that IPAT had misapplied the statutory presumption arising from past persecution and should have addressed other IPAT decisions in which Georgian domestic-violence applicants had been found unable to obtain effective protection.
The Court’s Holding
Mr Justice David Keane refused all substantive relief. The applicant’s first two grounds were foreclosed by the Court of Appeal’s decision in Z.M. v IPAT and N.G. v IPAT [2025] IECA 208, whose proposed appeal had subsequently been refused by the Supreme Court. IPAT was entitled to assess the availability of state protection after finding a well-founded fear of persecution; it had not misconstrued the refugee definition or failed to apply section 28(6) of the International Protection Act 2015.
The Court also rejected the alleged inconsistency and irrationality grounds. Tribunal decisions do not create binding factual precedents, except in effectively same-transaction cases such as family members with materially identical circumstances. Consistency across similar cases is desirable, but an objective assessment of the country conditions and the individual applicant’s circumstances is what each decision requires. IPAT had considered current country information, and it was not obliged to identify or distinguish other decisions of its own motion or to prefer older material in the ECtHR’s 2021 Tkhelidze v Georgia judgment over more recent sources. The Court did, however, extend time for the judicial-review application, filed about 13 days late.
Key Takeaways
- A finding of past persecution and a well-founded fear does not prevent IPAT from finding effective state protection is available.
- IPAT is not bound to follow or distinguish decisions in merely similar protection cases.
- Consistency is a desirable system-wide objective, but each protection claim requires an objective assessment of current country information and personal circumstances.
Why It Matters
The judgment confirms the limited role of comparative IPAT decisions in judicial review. Applicants cannot establish unlawfulness simply by collecting favourable decisions involving similar country conditions; they must show a material legal error, an inadequate assessment of relevant evidence, or circumstances effectively identical to a linked case.
It also underlines the importance of current country-of-origin evidence when assessing state protection. Although the Court extended time on the facts, it reiterated that delays caused by legal representatives will not ordinarily amount to a good and sufficient reason on their own.