The High Court has quashed two Data Protection Commission decisions rejecting complaints about the omission of fada marks from Julian de Spáinn’s name and addresses, and sent the complaints back to the Commission for fresh decisions.
In a judgment delivered on 31 January 2024, Mr Justice Cian Ferriter said the Commission had not properly examined the merits of the complaints. He directed it to begin a fair and lawful decision-making process and to seek relevant information from Aer Lingus and Bank of Ireland. The court did not decide whether either organisation must correct its records.
De Spáinn, an Irish speaker who lives between the Kerry Gaeltacht and Dublin, complained that the companies’ computer systems held or processed inaccurate personal data because his name and addresses were recorded without fadas. He asked them to correct the records in 2022. Both refused, saying, in substance, that relevant parts of their systems could not process the marks.
He complained to the Commission in January 2023, relying on technical and linguistic expert material and a Belgian court decision concerning diacritical marks. The Commission rejected both complaints in letters dated 9 March 2023. It did not open a new investigation, seek submissions from the companies or address the material he had provided. The Commission later accepted that its decisions were flawed and asked the High Court to quash them and return the matters for fresh decisions.
De Spáinn agreed the decisions should be quashed but argued that the court should replace them with its own decision, including a declaration that the right to rectification under the GDPR and the EU Charter covered the fadas in his records. The Commission disputed that the court had jurisdiction to make such a declaration. The judge left that wider question open.
Mr Justice Ferriter found that the decisions wrongly stated that the right to rectification did not apply when diacritical marks were omitted. He said a person’s name and address, including fadas, could be personal data, and that omission of the marks could in principle be the subject of a rectification request. The relevant question was whether the controllers had taken all reasonable steps to correct inaccurate data, considering the purposes for which it was processed.
That assessment, he said, depended on facts about the companies’ systems and their ability to accommodate fadas. The court lacked the Commission’s power to investigate those systems and obtain responses from the companies. Aer Lingus and Bank of Ireland were not parties to the appeal. The judge therefore considered the Commission the appropriate forum for fresh decisions.
The ruling does not determine whether the complaints are justified or whether the records must be corrected. The Commission must assess the complaints anew, engage with the complainant’s case and expert evidence, and consider the companies’ responses.