A Romanian metal worker, now living in Cork, yesterday won a High Court order quashing the Minister for Justice's refusal to grant him refugee status here. Mr Justice O'Sullivan granted the order to Mr Constantin Dascalu (26), Margaret Street, Cork.
Mr Dascalu arrived from Britain in January 1996 and applied for political asylum. In his application, Mr Dascalu said he had decided to leave Romania after participating in an anti-communist and pro-monarchy demonstration in Romania and incurring the wrath of the police authorities.
When interviewed about his asylum application by a Department of Justice official in April 1997, Mr Dascalu said what he had written in his application was not the truth and he had told lies.
At the interview, he revealed that he left Romania in 1995 having received a call for military service beforehand. From Warsaw he travelled to Britain in a truck, via Germany, and arrived somewhere close to London.
There he met some Romanians from whom he gathered he had no chance of gaining asylum in the UK and he feared he might be deported, the judge said. Mr Dascalu then came to Ireland and applied for asylum here.
At the interview, he admitted that his replies to an application questionnaire were untrue, and said the only reason he did not wish to remain in Romania was because he did not want to do his military service.
The Minister for Justice refused his application and Mr Dascalu took legal proceedings challenging that decision.
In his judgment on the challenge, Mr Justice O'Sullivan held that the Minister was at fault in not notifying Mr Dascalu personally that the 1985 Von Arnim procedure for determining refugee status in Ireland was changed in December 1997 to a new procedure, known as the Hope Hanlon procedure.
That procedure, named after the then representative of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, authorises a Department of Justice official to terminate further examination of an asylum-seeker's application on the grounds that it is manifestly unfounded, and permits refusal of the person's application for refugee status.
Had Mr Dascalu been notified of the change in procedures governing asylum applications, he would have been entitled to make a further submission and/or consult a lawyer, the judge said.
On that ground, the judge granted Mr Dascalu an order quashing the Minister's decision refusing his application for refugee status, though he would not grant him a declaration that he was entitled to have his application determined under the earlier Von Arnim refugee status procedure.
Mr Dascalu was represented by Mr Feichin McDonagh SC.