The president of the High Court has awarded costs against the Minister for Justice of a legal action brought over “unexplained delay” in issuing a decision on an Iranian man’s application for a certificate of naturalisation.
The man eventually secured the certificate of naturalisation on the eve of the hearing of his High Court proceedings challenging the almost four-year delay.
Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said yesterday he could see no evidence to support the Minister’s claims there was a system in place for dealing with such applications. The judge made the comments in a judgment awarding costs to Dana Salman, who waited three years and nine months for a decision from the Minister, of his judicial review proceedings over the delay.
Mr Salman made his application on February 2nd, 2008, but was given no explanation why the application was taking so long to process and why it was taking much longer than the average time period (26 months), the judge said.