Barth O' Neill – Court Ruling (Ireland, 2024)

The applicant is the data subject who files his income tax in Ireland. The controller is the Irish tax authority, the Revenue Commissioner. The data subject sought to challenge the controller’s refusal to erase data related to his 2007 tax return after they invoked the right to erasure under Article 17 GDPR. The data subject had previously reached a settlement with the tax authority in 2016 regarding tax assessments. In 2021, he requested the erasure of his 2007 tax data, which the controller refused, citing legal obligations under the Taxes Acts, which are also recognized in Article 17(3)(b) GDPR. The controller stated that the data subject could approach the Data Protection Commission if he was not in agreement with the decision of the controller. Instead of approaching the Data Protection Commission, the data subject applied for judicial review of controller’s decision before the High Court. In this case before the High Court, the data subject filed an application to have the proceedings heard in camera or anonymized. The data subject argued that if the proceedings were not anonymized or held in camera, it would render his substantive relief pointless, as the very information he sought to protect would become public through the court process. Further, he argued that public proceedings could create an impression that he was a non-compliant taxpayer, potentially causing irreparable damage to his reputation. The High Court rejected the data subject’s application for in camera proceedings or anonymization. The court found that the constitutional principle of administering justice in public outweighed the data subject’s privacy concerns. It determined that the data subject’s case did not meet the exceptional circumstances required to justify a departure from public proceedings, as outlined in previous case law. In this case, the High Court noted, the data subject had already brought an application for judicial review in his name without seeking to anonymise that a