Google delists another 11 Irish Examiner articles about Sean Quinn and his family

The last relates to Mr Quinn’s testimony at the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank executives Sean Fitzpatrick, Pat Whelan, and Willie McAteer in early 2014. File photo

Eleven Irish Examiner news articles (listed at bottom of the page) relating to former billionaire Sean Quinn and his family have been removed from Google’s search service since the beginning of 2022.

The delistings bring the number of Irish Examiner pieces on the Quinns removed since late last year to 37, together with 30 other associate images and news topic indices.

Eight of the newly delisted pieces date from 2012, two are from 2013, and the last relates to Mr Quinn’s testimony at the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank executives Sean Fitzpatrick, Pat Whelan, and Willie McAteer in early 2014.

The vast majority of the topics covered concern court appearances involving Mr Quinn or his children. One involves a court appearance for Mr Quinn’s son Sean Jr in 2012, who was jailed at the time for three months for contempt of a High Court ruling, which saw traffic charges relating to his being unable to produce a certificate of insurance at a traffic stop in Dublin in 2011 struck out.

Another covers Mr Quinn Jr’s appeal against his contempt conviction relating to his participation in asset-stripping in eastern Europe in the wake of the Quinn empire being taken over by the Irish Banking Resolution Corporation (IBRC) in 2011.

A number of the other pieces now delisted cover Mr Quinn Jr losing that appeal in the Supreme Court, which ruled he was involved in a scheme to put his family’s assets beyond the reach of IBRC. His father’s imprisonment for nine weeks in late 2012 for contempt of court is also among the reports delisted.

It is unclear who has made the request for the reports to be delisted, or when those requests were lodged.

Late last year a slew of articles concerning the Quinns, most of them dealing with their legal struggles in the High Court with IBRC, were delisted from the websites of the Irish Examiner, the Irish Times, and the Irish Independent.

Such delistings stem from a landmark decision by the European Court of Justice in 2014 in a case involving Google Spain, which instituted the so-called Right to be Forgotten in EU law.

The Right to be Forgotten applies to all search engines and is primarily designed to aid requesters in having out-of-date or now-irrelevant information, such as reports concerning spent convictions pertaining to them, removed from internet searches.

The regime has come in for a deal of criticism due to a perceived lack of transparency as to how decisions are made regarding what gets delisted and why.

While the pieces, topics and imagery delisted remain published, they will theoretically be more difficult to find, particularly for a browser searching with limited knowledge of the subject matter.

The newly delisted reports are:

• Quinn insurance charge struck out
• Quinn Jr forgot to produce car insurance cert
• Senior judge queries Quinn bid
• Recording shows ‘torrid’ money row
• Quinn Jnr to hear ruling on appeal against imprisonment
• Sean Quinn Jnr loses appeal
• Sean Quinn jailed for nine weeks, pending appeal
• Court told Quinn Jnr doesn't have means to pay 0k to purge contempt
• Garlic fraudster free in 7 months
• Quinn settles unfair dismissal case
• Quinn gives evidence at Anglo trial