Lawyers question Irish visa process after High Court Gazan student ruling

Lawyers representing Palestinian students denied Irish study visas have raised serious concerns regarding the integrity of application processing, irishexaminer.com reported. The warning from Phoenix Law partner Sinéad Marmion followed a High Court ruling that identified significant and demonstrable errors in the visa refusal of Shaymaa Abudalu. The 20-year-old Gazan student had secured a fully-funded scholarship to study engineering at University College Cork. [1]

According to irishexaminer.com, the Department of Justice acknowledged receiving Abudalu's visa application but failed to forward the required documentation to decision-makers in Dublin. As FTMQ News reported earlier, the High Court quashed the Minister for Justice's original refusal and ordered the Irish government to reconsider her application within ten days. [1][4]

The legal action comes amid a steep rise in visa rejections for Gazan students. As FTMQ News reported earlier, Ireland rejected 114 out of 138 Palestinian study visa applications in 2026, which represents an 83 percent refusal rate. This marks a substantial increase from 2025, when the state refused 22 out of 164 long-stay study visa applications from Palestine. [5]

The disputes over study visas take place alongside the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an ongoing military and political struggle centered on land and self-determination in the former territory of Mandatory Palestine. Key features of the conflict include security measures, the permit regime in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement. [3]