agreement reached on Wednesday<\/a> between justice minister Jim O\u2019Callaghan and lawyers for the four students.<\/p>\nThe High Court had been due to hear the students\u2019 judicial review challenges against the refusal of visas to allow them to pursue fully funded scholarships at Irish universities.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Justice Anthony Barr was told the cases had been settled following an offer by Mr O\u2019Callaghan to determine the students\u2019 appeals by close of business today.<\/p>\n
The appeal process around student visa refusals normally takes a year or more, but with their courses already under way, the students had sought an order requiring the minister to prioritise the hearing of their appeals.<\/p>\n
Among the reasons cited for refusal of their visas was that they had submitted insufficient documentation of past education or work qualifications.<\/p>\n
The students\u2019 lawyers argued that the civilian infrastructure for them to go to a bank or post office to get such documents no longer exists in Gaza.<\/p>\n
One of those granted a visa on appeal is a young psychology student who will study for a master\u2019s degree in psychology at UCC.<\/p>\n
Douglas-based solicitor Susan Doyle, who represented that student, said Mr O\u2019Callaghan had previously stated on the record that visa appeals could not be prioritised.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have now seen that they can be,\u201d she said. “There are dozens of other students awaiting appeal decisions, and today\u2019s news will give them some hope that they may still be able to travel to Ireland to take up their courses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be so much more humane if the minister would just agree to prioritise these cases rather than making them go through the court process.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, in a separate High Court hearing, Mr Justice Garret Simons granted permission for the hearing of dozens of judicial review applications next week, saying it was \u201cliterally a matter of life and death\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A scholarship student bound for University College Cork is one of three young Gazans granted leave to come…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4712,79,61,1629,60,43],"class_list":["post-650224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-israel-palestine","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-immigration","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}