A recent decision of the Irish Circuit Court will mean that the High Court in Ireland will have the opportunity to add to the evolving EU jurisprudence involving the right to be forgotten later in 2017.
The Circuit Court ruled in favour of a politician and candidate in the 2014 local elections, Mark Savage, who had made an application to Google to remove a link to a post appearing on Reddit, which in his view described him as homophobic. This was the first instance in which an Irish Court was required to consider the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) in Google Spain SL & Google Inc v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) & Mario Costeja González (‘Google Spain’). That case established a ‘right to be forgotten’. This article looks at the facts and issues in the case.