The Irish Society for European Law will hold an Update on Data Protection, next Thursday, 23 March 2017, at 6:30pm in the Ormond Meeting Rooms, 31-36 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7.

The event will be chaired by the Hon Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan, Judge of the Court of Appeal; and the speakers will be Bruno Gencarelli (Head of the Data Flows & Protection Unit, DG Justice & Consumers, European Commission), Andreas Carney (Partner, Matheson), Emily Gibson BL (Law Library, Dublin), and me.

The event is open to all and is free of charge to ISEL members (there is a €30 charge for non-ISEL members, payable on arrival). Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Please register for the event at www.isel.ie. 1.5 CPD points are available for this event.

The title of my talk is: The Right to be Forgotten – is it time to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony? I will consider whether delinking in support of the right to be forgotten [R2bF] ought to have worldwide effect. My talk will be in three brief parts. The first part will consider CJEU R2bF caselaw and member-state developments on the question whether an R2bF delinking derived from EU law should be effective worldwide or just inside the EU. Against this backdrop, the second part of the talk will argue that the Circuit Court decision Savage v Data Protection Commissioner & Google (Circuit Court, unreported, 11 October 2016, Sheahan J; pdf via DPC) mis-applied the R2bF. Third, combining the first and second parts, the final part of the talk will consider the proceedings in Google v Equustek Solutions (hearing 5 December 2016; webcast), in which the Supreme Court of Canada was invited to uphold an injunction (2015 BCCA 265) that an R2bF delinking derived from Canadian common law and constitutional considerations should be effective worldwide.