A couple from Georgia who tried to deceive the authorities in an attempt to secure asylum here, including using false allegations by the wife she had been sexually abused, have lost a legal bid to overturn a deportation order against the husband.
The Supreme Court ruled the State was entitled to make the deportation order against the husband after rejecting claims that deportation of the man for an indefinite period breached his, and his family's, rights under the Constitution and European Convention of Human Rights.
The wife and two children remain here.
Mr Justice John Murray, on behalf of the five-judge court, said it would be incongruous to expect a deportation order in this type of case to have a defined or limited period within which the obligation to remain outside the State would end.
The case arose from an appeal against a 2012 High Court decision which also found against Davit Arabuli, a Georgian national who had been living here unlawfully for nearly 10 years before he was deported in November 2011.
Indefinite period
The president of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, refused to declare unconstitutional the law which allowed the Minister for Justice to deport him for an indefinite period.
He rejected an application on behalf of Mr Arabuli, his wife Lela Sivsivadze and their two children, to declare invalid the provision of the Immigration Act 1999 under which he was deported.
Mr Justice Kearns found the 1999 Act contained multiple safeguards and a litany of factors which must be taken into account before a deportation order is made and also withstood any test of proportionality.
Rejecting the family’s appeal against that decision, a unanimous Supreme Court found there was nothing in the Act restricting any constitutional obligation on the Minister to exercise his discretion proportionately in the circumstances of any individual case.
Adverse impact
The relevant provisions of the law could not be said to be unconstitutional because they would necessarily involve an adverse impact on constitutional family rights, Mr Justice Murray said.
The Act was not incompatible with Article 15 of the Constitution, vesting the power to make laws to the Oireachtas, he said.
It was also not incompatible with the State’s obligations under Article 8, the right to family life, under the European Convention on Human Rights, he said.
Earlier, Mr Justice Murray noted the Minister had argued the family should be denied any reliefs because of the "egregious abuse" of the asylum system by Mr Arbuli and his wife.
Ms Sivsivadze had maintained “a tissue of lies” throughout her asylum application, claiming to have fled Georgia because she suffered “horrendous” sexual abuse as a child, the judge said.
Only in February last had she admitted her lies and set out the true circumstances in which she left Georgia, he said.
Mr Arabuli had been involved in “an orchestrated form of deception of the State authorities for the purpose of seeking asylum” and in his efforts to evade the deportation order first made against him in 2001, the judge said.