Sean Quinn’s right to be forgotten on Google

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This week there has been vast array of media outlets reporting that Sean Quinn or principles representing him, have applied the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ EU Law. According to the Irish Examiner, the family of former billionaire Sean Quinn has succeeded in having 55 items published by the Irish Examiner removed by Google’s search service.

Other newspapers such as the Irish News in the North and the Irish Times have also reported the removal of their articles referencing Sean Quinn from Google Search Engines.

The Irish Examiner suggest the delisting of those published items from the search engines – follows a concerted effort on the part of the family to have mentions of various court cases they have been involved in, and some separate coverage of their activities, delisted by Google.

The delisting’s were granted by Google during September and October, though it isn’t known who made the requests or when they were lodged.

Some opinions, especially in his home County of Fermanagh, would suggest Sean Quinn deserves the right to some privacy and normality..and nearly ten years later you would like to think that the media might focus their attention on those in Government and the banking system who seem to have got away with actions that left the Irish Economy in a mess.

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The Right to be Forgotten applies to all search engines and is primarily designed to aid requesters in having out-of-date or now-irrelevant information, such as reports concerning spent convictions pertaining to them, removed from internet searches.

In other news from the Finanical Times – Seán FitzPatrick, the Irish banker who symbolised Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom-and-bust, has recently died of a heart attack aged 73.

The man who built Anglo Irish Bank into a financial juggernaut that spectacularly crashed after reckless loans and dubious accounting practices, died on Monday, according to his family.

FitzPatrick always remained unrepentant about his role in the crisis that plunged the Irish banking sector into a €64bn bailout after the global financial crisis exposed a colossal liquidity crunch.

Image Credit: RTE