Department 'fully satisfied' with appointment of ex-Meta lobbyist to Data Protection Commission

The appointment of Niamh Sweeney has been deemed controversial given her previous six-year public policy role with Meta, one of the Data Protection Commission's principal litigation adversaries over much of the past 15 years in both the Irish and European courts. File photo: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

The Department of Justice said it is “fully satisfied” with the appointment of a former lobbyist for Facebook parent firm Meta as Ireland’s newest data protection commissioner.

The Department, which oversaw the appointment of Niamh Sweeney via the Public Appointments Service earlier this month, was responding after a complaint to the European Commission alleging that Ireland had failed to ensure “independence and impartiality” in the process of appointing Ms Sweeney.

The complaint was delivered to the European Commission by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), which alleged that the appointment of Ms Sweeney for a five-year term amounts to an infringement of EU law. The law requires that national regulators, such as the Data Protection Commission (DPC), must be fully independent and “above any suspicion of partiality”.

The ICCL’s senior fellow, Johnny Ryan, who brought the complaint, said that the European Commission should hear it, given that it is duty-bound to be concerned with conflicts of interest or the independence of staff at regulatory bodies within the EU, such as the DPC.

The appointment of Ms Sweeney has been deemed controversial given her previous six-year public policy role with Meta, one of the DPC’s principal litigation adversaries over much of the past 15 years in both the Irish and European courts.

Her interview panel within the civil service appointments agency had included a member who previously worked for various big tech interests as a lawyer.

However, queried regarding the ICCL’s complaint, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice noted that the appointment had been made on foot of the recommendation of the Public Appointments Service.

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“The recommendation from the Public Appointments Service followed from an open competition,” they said, adding that the department remains “fully satisfied with the appointment process”.

The DPC declined to respond to a request for comment on the matter.

In recent years, the DPC has levied significant fines against corporates found in breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with Meta slapped with multiple fines totalling well over €1bn for such breaches.

Earlier, EC spokesperson for international partnerships Guillaume Mercier told Politico that the commission “is not empowered to take action with respect to those appointments”.

“It is for the member states to appoint members to their respective data protection authorities,” Mr Mercier said, while adding that the EU countries in question have a responsibility to ensure that any appointment process must be “transparent”.