Irish taxpayers will benefit from the massive €1,200,000,000 fine imposed by the Privacy Commissioner on Facebook owner Meta on Monday, reports The Mirror.
A spokesperson for the CCS confirmed to the Irish Mirror last night that the Irish fund will directly benefit from the huge traffic jam that will be waiting for the tracks – if Meta does not win the appeal they will appeal.
The fine for breaching GDPR laws comes into our coffers because Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, has its international headquarters in Dublin’s Digital Docklands.
And there could be more good news for taxpayers today, as the latest hearing in Apple’s state aid case is before the European Court of Justice
It has already been settled that Apple owes us €13 billion in back taxes after the company lost the original case.
But ironically, the Irish government is appealing as it does not want to set a bad precedent for other foreign direct investment (FDI) companies located here.
The CCS was criticized yesterday for its meta decision. A Greens TD said the late fine against Meta showed that Meta had “failed miserably” in performing its duties.
Justice Green’s spokesman, Patrick Costello, said: “To be clear, this ruling happened in spite of the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), not because of them. This ruling is the result of a decade-long case on Meta’s involvement in US mass surveillance. It involved three judicial reviews against Irish DPC. The original DPC decision was overruled by EPDB who insisted on the record fine imposed here and that Meta must suspend the transfer of data from the EU to the US. This is not the first time that the Irish DPC have failed to levy appropriate fines against tech multinationals,” reports The Mirror.
“In the Irish Council of Civil Liberties report last week, which examined the enforcement of GDPR across Europe, it found that Irish decisions on GDPR were overruled 75% of the time by the EPDB. The next highest rate of overrule was France with 2%. It’s clear that the Irish DPC is failing miserably in protecting not only Irish citizens, but EU citizens as a whole,” it added, reports The Mirror.
Sinn Féin spokeswoman Louise O’Reilly said the government should consider launching an inquiry into how “Big Tech” is using Irish people’s data.
Ms O’Reilly said: “This ruling should be a wake-up call for the government regarding the regulation of ‘Big Tech’,” reports The Mirror.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.