Deportation order would forcibly split family: judge

AN Irish woman, her Nigerian husband and Irish-born daughter have won their High Court challenge to an order for his deportation made while the woman was pregnant.

Mr Justice Gerard Hogan found the Justice Minister’s decision to deport the man effectively amounted to a permanent forcible separation of the family.

The “essential point” in the case was the constitutional protection of the fundamentals of marriage and insistence that the state respects the essence of that relationship, the judge said.