Appeal court overturns finding that State breached rights of homeless asylum seekers
High Court Reporters
The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court finding that the State's failure to provide accommodation for homeless asylum seekers was a breach of their fundamental rights.
The appeal court said the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) had not proved that the situation of extreme material poverty for homeless asylum seekers undermined the physical and/or mental health of the members of that class of persons or put them in a state of degradation incompatible with human dignity.
Mr Justice Anthony Collins, on behalf of the three-judge Court of Appeal (CoA), allowed an appeal brought by the State over the High Court decision. He dismissed IHREC's application for judicial review.
State-funded IHREC issued its challenge in December of 2023 after the Government announced for the second time that it could not accommodate all single adult male arrivals amid “unprecedented pressure” on services.
At that point, 259 adult male applicants were awaiting an offer of accommodation. This figure had risen to 2,987, according to Department of Integration figures.
IHREC argued the number of unaccommodated applicants has continued to rise, and the situation continued to be a humanitarian emergency.
The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and the State said the situation for newly-arrived male asylum seekers had “improved considerably” in the preceding months, with the State’s International Protection Accommodation Services able to offer accommodation to everyone who was “actively rough sleeping”.
In August 2024, the High Court ruled that the State’s response to the needs of unaccommodated asylum seekers was “inadequate” to the point of breaching the men’s right to human dignity as set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.
Mr Justice Collins, on Wednesday, found IHREC had an express statutory entitlement to commence proceedings for the purpose of obtaining the relief it sought.
He said in order to succeed in these proceedings, IHREC must prove, on the balance of probabilities, that a class consisting of those applicants who presented to the International Protection Office between December 4th, 2023 and May 10th, 2024, and who did not receive an offer of accommodation, were in a situation of extreme material poverty.
It must also prove this prevented them meeting their most basic needs and which situation undermined their physical and/or mental health or put them in a state of degradation incompatible with human dignity.
The court was prepared to infer that the members of that class of persons were thereby placed in a situation of extreme material poverty.
However, he said IHREC had not proved that that situation of extreme material poverty undermined the physical and/or mental health of the members of that class of persons or put the members of that class in a state of degradation incompatible with human dignity.
In relation to costs, he said bona fide proceedings instituted by a body funded by the public purse against the body which is funded from the same source are "a necessary, if infrequent, feature of the operation of the rule of law.
An order to award the costs of this appeal to either party could only increase the level of resources expended upon the legitimate purpose of resolving the issues at stake in this litigation, he said.
Accordingly, he proposed he would neither disturb the High Court costs order nor make any order as to the costs of this appeal, unless either party seeks a different order.
