{"id":525310,"date":"2026-06-30T05:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/525310\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T05:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:44:09","slug":"ireland-is-big-techs-lapdog-and-that-compromises-its-eu-presidency-johnny-ryan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/525310\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland is big tech\u2019s lapdog \u2013 and that compromises its EU presidency | Johnny\u00a0Ryan"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the face of it, Ireland<\/a> behaves like a good European by being a staunch advocate of human rights and a beacon of progressivism on the western edge of the continent. But there is one vital area in which its record is less than perfect \u2013 one that should cause concern when the Irish government takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the EU on 1 July. The EU\u2019s tech and AI rulebook will be renegotiated during the same period, but the Irish state and economy have been captured by big tech. Ireland is so compromised that as president of the Council of the EU, it should recuse itself from all tech and digital sovereignty negotiations.<\/p>\n

The last time Ireland held the EU presidency was in 2013, during negotiations on the General Data Protection Regulation<\/a> (GDPR). A leaked<\/a> Facebook memo<\/a> describes a 2013 meeting where the company\u2019s executives met Ireland\u2019s then prime minister to complain about the proposed data privacy rules. They left understanding they had Enda Kenny\u2019s assurance that Ireland would use its \u201csignificant influence\u201d as EU Council president to deliver what Facebook called a \u201cpositive outcome\u201d. The executives also attended \u201ca dinner hosted by senior Irish politicians to work through the various ways that the Irish could be helpful\u201d.<\/p>\n

The 27 EU member states take it in turns to hold the presidency. The presiding country chairs meetings and in effect controls the pace of negotiations on EU legislation. It can prioritise some topics and allow others to slide. For example, Cyprus, a small and vulnerable country in a volatile region, was able to use its presidency<\/a> from January to June of this year to put mutual defence commitments on Europe\u2019s agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lured by tax breaks and a culture of gentle persiflage, giants such as Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok and X all established their European headquarters in Ireland. The EU\u2019s \u201ccountry of origin\u201d principle determines that the country that hosts a company\u2019s European HQ is the country responsible for regulating it across the EU. This legal quirk has turned the Irish data protectioncommission (DPC) into Europe\u2019s primary watchdog for the tech sector: Ireland pushed<\/a> to make this happen as council president<\/a> in 2013.<\/p>\n

The effects of this arrangement are staggering. The DPC\u2019s chairperson recently admitted that apart from \u201camicable resolutions\u201d on trivial issues, Ireland has not completed<\/a> a single EU inquiry into Google or any of its subsidiaries in the 10 years since the GDPR was enacted. EU-wide protections are paralysed because every other member state must wait<\/a> for Ireland to act in an EU-wide response.<\/p>\n

When the DPC has enforced against big tech firms, it has done so poorly<\/a> and under duress from other European regulators. It did move with uncharacteristic speed in one instance<\/a>, against Elon Musk\u2019s Grok AI, but then accepted a settlement that appears to have collapsed<\/a>. Ireland\u2019s media regulator, Coimisi\u00fan na Mean, enjoys a better reputation but has far weaker powers. For a decade now, Ireland has held open the regulatory back door that allows giant US and Chinese companies<\/a> to operate with impunity<\/a> across Europe. It has become not only a tax haven<\/a>, but a haven from regulation.<\/p>\n

The economic dependency is stark. Three US firms accounted for almost half<\/a> of Ireland\u2019s corporate tax revenue in 2024. In 2022, Ireland collected almost five times<\/a> more corporate tax per person than France or Germany. You may admire a once small, poor and un-industrialised country for having won the race to the bottom and becoming rich. But the consequences have been grim for European democracy<\/a>, competitiveness<\/a>, security<\/a> \u2013 and particularly for children.<\/p>\n

The 2026 film Molly v the Machines<\/a> tells the story of how social media algorithms pushed suicidal content into the feed of 14-year-old Molly Russell,<\/a> who took her own life in 2017. There are and will be more Mollys across Europe unless Ireland starts to enforce EU data rules that require \u201crecommender algorithms\u201d to be switched off by default, because they draw upon particularly intimate data.<\/p>\n

Ireland may no longer even be keeping up appearances. The country\u2019s newest data protection commissioner, Niamh Sweeney, was previously Meta\u2019 senior lobbyist in Ireland during the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the grim period covered by whistleblower Frances Haugen\u2019s revelations<\/a>. The Irish government\u2019s process to recruit Sweeney was absurd: the only tech expert on the selection panel was a lawyer for big tech<\/a>. The selection criteria<\/a> focused on generic skills such as \u201cmanaging relationships\u201d, rather than trying to hire an enforcer capable of investigating the world\u2019s most technologically sophisticated companies. No one checked during the hiring process if the appointee was bound by Meta\u2019s notorious practice<\/a> of barring ex-employees from criticising it, which gagged<\/a> the former Meta executive and whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams so thoroughly. Ireland gives the DPC tens of millions of euros to operate, but lobotomises it.<\/p>\n

And the doors keep revolving: the previous data protection commissioner, Helen Dixon, has just started working for Meta\u2019s law firm<\/a>. The firm continues to act in many live cases<\/a> for Meta against the DPC. Under Dixon, the DPC sued other European data authorities at the EU\u2019s top court because they had voted<\/a> that the DPC must investigate Meta\u2019s use of people\u2019s most intimate data. While the case was dismissed<\/a>, Dixon\u2019s action granted Meta a year\u2019s reprieve from an investigation even starting.<\/p>\n

In the book Careless People by Wynn-Williams, she articulates the Meta view of the DPC as a \u201clapdog<\/a>\u201d. This eerily mirrors the Irish financial regulator\u2019s hesitancy and deference to Irish banks<\/a> in the years leading up to the 2008 banking crisis. Earlier this month, Ireland\u2019s foreign minister posted a photo posing<\/a> with a Meta lobbyist on her LinkedIn profile. \u201cGreat to meet with Meta yesterday to discuss priorities for Ireland\u2019s upcoming presidency,\u201d said the caption, along with various talking points from Meta\u2019s 2013 memo that in 2026 appear to have become Irish government policy.<\/p>\n

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Ireland is even accused of \u201cblocking<\/a>\u201d class actions from being filed against tech firms on behalf of children<\/a> by prohibiting commercial funding, even though it permits such funding for commercial arbitration. According to the EU\u2019s Eurobarometer poll this month, 92% of Europeans<\/a> want the EU to deliver better protection for their children online. Ireland will not deliver such protection unless other EU governments start insisting on it. How much longer will European leaders tolerate Ireland selling out the mental health of their countries\u2019 children?<\/p>\n

There was a time when Europe looked like the world\u2019s answer to the worst excesses of big tech. Ireland has sabotaged that dream for a massive payoff. If it will not recuse itself from all tech discussions during its six-month presidency, then Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Madrid and Brussels should pile the same kind of pressure on Ireland<\/a> some of them did after the banking crisis. What was unfair then would be entirely fair this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the face of it, Ireland behaves like a good European by being a staunch advocate of human…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-525310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}