Against law, the Courts Service website published names of some people seeking asylum by “error”

On 5 September, searching “International Protection Appeals Tribunal” (IPAT) on the Courts Service website’s High Court search engine threw up 76 filing notices.  

They included full names of people who’d brought cases against IPAT as recently as this month and as far back as 2017.

Most of these cases were docketed on the court’s “asylum list”, their details showed.

All kinds of immigration cases end up on the court’s “asylum list”, but when an asylum office – like IPAT – is named as a defendant, it implies it’s been brought by people seeking protection, says Wendy Lyon, partner and solicitor at Abbey Law.

Under section 26 of the International Protection Act 2015, it is unlawful to publish or broadcast anything that causes someone to be identified as an asylum seeker without their consent. 

Offenders can be fined and/or jailed for up to a year – though there’s only been a handful of prosecutions in recent years. 

On 30 August, an anonymous account on X re-published the name of a person seeking asylum, screenshotted from the Courts Service website, to its roughly 18,000 followers. 

Stephen Kirwan, partner and solicitor at KOD Lyons, said that’s his client’s name, an asylum seeker, and a skittish guy who goes out of his way to avoid trouble.

Kirwan said he’s waiting for instructions from his client on potential next steps. “If it were a tweet just about me, I wouldn’t care,” he said by phone, recently. 

Albert Llussà, partner and solicitor at Daly Lynch Crowe & Morris Solicitors– whose firm’s client name was also published on the Courts Service website – says previous court rulings say people who’d sought asylum are entitled to privacy even if their asylum case was thrown out.

Sometimes people who’d sought asylum do not want their names out there because of the people they fled from in their country of birth, Llussà says. 

Says Kirwan: “It’d defeat the whole purpose of having an international protection system.”

Sometimes, they want privacy because their status can stigmatise them in Ireland, especially in today’s hostile climate, say Kirwan and Llussà. 

Meanwhile, some anti-immigrant accounts on X mine state bodies’ websites for content and can use the High Court’s search engine to unlawfully name people.

Often, while implying that people seeking asylum shouldn’t be allowed to make their case to a High Court judge.

A spokesperson for the Courts Service of Ireland said, “recently an error was made in the filing of a small number of asylum cases, which resulted in names appearing on our database, but not on the legal diary”.

It has revised its processes to make sure it won’t happen again, the spokesperson said.

On Tuesday, searching IPAT on the Courts Service website still threw up filing notices with applicants’ full names and IPAT as defendants, albeit fewer, this time 61. 

They were mostly older cases, filed between 2024 to 2017, casting uncertainty on whether the filing error had been a recent oversight.

Setting the record straight

Llussà, the solicitor at Daly Lynch Crowe & Morris, said he thought it wasn’t even possible to query asylum cases on the Courts Service website. “Precisely to protect the anonymity of applicants”.

He points to the search engine of the IPAT decisions archive and how it redacts the names of people seeking asylum, even if they were denied protection.

It’s also not readily accessible. Those interested in checking it out must email the tribunal and request login details. 

Llussà also mentions the case of M.A.R.A. (then a baby girl and her mum who’d sought asylum from Nigeria), and how it centres the question of whether people who’d unsuccessfully sought asylum were still entitled to privacy when they turn to the High Court to appeal that decision. 

“Whether their names should be redacted notwithstanding that they very often seek judicial review in open court in the High Court of decisions against them in the otherwise private asylum process,” says the ruling.

The Supreme Court decided they were, Llussà says.

In his judgment dated 12 December 2014, Mr Justice Peter Charleton ruled that just because someone’s asylum claim wasn’t a success, that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve privacy anymore. 

“Since the applicant and her mother have applied for refugee status, albeit unsuccessfully, they remain entitled in this judgment and in any report of these court proceedings to anonymity,” says his ruling.

Kirwan, the solicitor at KOD Lyons, says the law hadn’t envisioned shielding asylum seekers from the general public in a country they’d fled to, but it is serving that purpose, at the moment. 

“It makes even more sense now with all the absolute madness that’s going on,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Court Service also said it’s not redacting names in some cases that are not related to someone’s asylum case, like when a refugee brings a family reunification case to the High Court.

Although Mr Justice Charleton’s 2014 ruling says, “Once a person has applied for refugee status … they retain anonymity with regard to any litigation relevant thereto in perpetuity.” 

“Should there be unrelated litigation, such as a factory accident, that protection remains and, while the tort case may be reported normally, any mention of any prior failed application for refugee status may not be reported publicly,” it says.

A 2024 court ruling on a family reunion case available online via the Courts Service] features a refugee’s full name and identifies her as such. 

Not all lawyers agree that that’s compliant, either. 

Lyon, the solicitor, says that if a family reunification case is brought on by someone granted refugee status under the International Protection Act, they’re covered by its privacy clause, too.

Llussà said he’s also not sure about the thinking behind forsaking privacy in those cases. He shares Lyon’s opinion, he said. 

Lyon says if an unrelated court ruling brought on by a refugee elides their asylum background and does not identify them as a former asylum seeker, then it can name them without consent.