The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in May 2018. It made Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) the lead EU supervisory authority for all companies that have their European headquarters here. This quirk of the law made Ireland a central jurisdiction in the global digital economy. It also made us responsible for policing what Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and other Big Tech firms do with the data and intimate secrets of Europe’s half a billion citizens.
From the outset there has been international concern about how the DPC has discharged this responsibility. Criticism has come from the DPC’s counterparts across the European Union, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament. Last year, the Oireachtas Justice Committee noted its “serious concern” at “the particularly slow progress of some cases being handled by the DPC”, and said it feared that “citizens’ fundamental rights are in peril”.
This month, a European Parliament delegation will arrive in Ireland to investigate whether the DPC has failed to protect EU citizens from Big Tech’s at times irresponsible data practices. At the same time the EU ombudsman, Dr Emily O’Reilly, has deepened her inquiry into whether the European Commission has kept a proper eye on how Ireland has discharged its responsibility as in effect Europe’s primary data protection enforcer.
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