The Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said that she has no choice but to apply the provisions of the EU general data protection regulations when it comes to the rights of convicted sex offenders to have the records of their court convictions removed from online search results.
The Minister was responding to a plea from the Regional Group TD, Denis Naughten, after he requested her to outline the steps she is willing to take to restrict the ‘right to be forgotten’ of those he described as having “convictions for the assault and rape of children and women and adults in this or any other country in Europe.”
According to Deputy Naughten, such individuals “should be refused point-blank the right to have these records erased.”
He further noted that those guilty of such crimes “should not be in a position where they can request and secure the erasure of this information. They are exploiting the privacy laws, and this cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.”
Responding, Minister McEntee said that “the response of the Department of Justice is that we must uphold the European laws and regulations that have been set out. If there is a situation in which somebody believes information that should not be removed has been removed, that person, be it Deputy Naughten or anybody else, has the right to make a complaint, which would be address by the Data Protection Commissioner.”
The deficiencies in this approach were then highlighted by Deputy Naughten when he noted the following:
“With all due respect, telling people that they can appeal a decision when the information is already taken down is no good. The Minister sits at the table of the European Council of Ministers along with her colleagues. I ask her and her colleagues to provide clarification and direction to the technology companies across Europe on this.”
In her reply, Minister McEntee said that she had no problem in restating to the tech companies such as Google exactly what they are required to do under EU GDPR laws, which includes a proviso that the right to be forgotten should be considered in the wider context of having certain kinds of information retained where it impacts the common good.