The High Court has upheld Coimisiún na Meán’s decision to refer complaint information about X to its supervisory team in three cases, but quashed its decision in a fourth case because X was not given a fair opportunity to respond to the concern behind it.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter ruled that section 201 of the Broadcasting Act 2009 allows the Commission to pass complaint information and identified compliance concerns to another part of the regulator for wider consideration. The section does not require the Commission to formally uphold or dismiss each complaint on its merits, he said.
The judicial review concerned four decisions made on 2 October 2025 about complaints by users identified in the judgment as Hy, Hp, MR and McW. The complaints raised alleged breaches of Articles 16, 17 and 20 of the EU Digital Services Act, covering content-reporting systems, statements of reasons for account restrictions, and internal complaint handling.
The Commission had considered X’s representations before referring information about the complaints to its supervisory team. Mr Justice Ferriter found that the referrals were within the Commission’s powers under section 201(4)(d), where concerns about compliance remained. He also rejected X’s challenge to the Commission’s delegation arrangements, finding that the delegated decision-makers were not improperly restricted to particular outcomes and that the Commission retained its powers under the section.
The court also rejected X’s argument that the Commission had used the McW complaint to investigate that individual complaint outside the statutory process. The judgment said the complaint material could be considered alongside other information in a separate, broader investigation into suspected Article 20 non-compliance. That investigation was not itself a determination of whether McW’s individual complaint was well-founded.
The exception was the MR decision. In its proposed-action letter, the Commission identified concerns about the alleged automation of X’s complaint-handling process and invited X to make representations. Its final decision instead relied on a concern that X had not issued reasoned decisions following the user’s appeals. The court found that this was a different aspect of Article 20, raised for the first time in the final decision, and that X had no opportunity to address it.
Mr Justice Ferriter therefore ordered certiorari quashing the final decision concerning MR on fair-procedures grounds. He refused the other relief sought by X. The judgment did not decide whether X had breached the Digital Services Act; the referrals allowed the Commission’s supervisory team to consider the information as part of its broader regulatory functions.