A Nigerian family of four face immediate deportation after failing to convince the Supreme Court that the order for their deportation was defective because it had not been “personally directed” by the Minister for Justice.

Mr Justice John MacMenamin said that departmental officials who signed the order were the alter-ego of the Minister and their decisions were, legally and constitutionally, the Minister’s acts and decisions.

The judge, handing down a reserved judgment on behalf of himself and Supreme Court judges Adrian Hardiman, Mary Laffoy, Elizabeth Dunne and Peter Charleton, said the deportation order had been signed by Noel Waters, a senior official in the Minister’s department in July 2011.

He said Mr Waters was the then director general of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service, which was part of the Minister’s department, and in that year 1,334 such decisions had to be considered.

The immigrant family, which includes two young children, had appealed against the decision of Mr Justice Gerard Hogan in the High Court dismissing their claim for judicial review of the Minister’s decision to deport them.

Mr Justice Gerard Hogan had certified as an exceptional point of law of public importance the question of whether or not the minister’s decision must be taken personally, an issue which, he said, should be decided by the Supreme Court.

Mr Justice MacMenamin said it was now well recognised in the law that each minister must both bear political responsibility to the Dáil and legal responsibility in the courts for actions taken by their own departments.

In law, ministers were regarded as being one and the same as the government departments of which they were the political heads.

Conversely, departmental officials acted in the name of the minister.

Frequently, a minister’s officials would prepare documents for consideration, consider objections, summarise memoranda and outline a policy approach to be taken by the minister as an integral part of the department’s decision-making process.

Carltona principle

The judge said part of this arrangement, identified as the Carltona principle, was that the functions entrusted to departmental officials were performed at an appropriate level of seniority and within the scope of responsibility of their government department.

“No express act of delegation is necessary,” the judge said. “What is in question in this appeal is clearly devolved power to an official rather than delegation per se.”

The judge said that the appellants had not succeeded in demonstrating that the decision-making power in question had been negatived, confined or restricted by express statutory provision or by clear necessary implication.

He noted that the family had faced the difficulty that there was already clear authority on the Carltona principle insofar as it applied to the area of immigration.