{"id":70559,"date":"2025-09-18T00:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T00:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/70559\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T00:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T00:31:09","slug":"ex-tech-lobbyist-named-as-irelands-new-data-protection-commissioner-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/70559\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-tech lobbyist named as Ireland\u2019s new Data Protection Commissioner \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Former tech industry lobbyist Niamh Sweeney has been named to the Data Protection Commission, the chief regulator for big tech firms in Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ms Sweeney will take up her role as data protection commissioner on October 13th, the Department of Justice said in a statement. She becomes the third commissioner, joining Des Hogan and Dale Sutherland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">\u201cThe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/data-protection-commission\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/data-protection-commission\">Data Protection Commission<\/a> has grown significantly in size, scope and responsibility over the last decade, playing a critical role as one of the largest EU data protection authorities,\u201d Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">\u201cAs the responsibilities and scope of the DPC continue to grow, I am pleased that three commissioners will now lead and manage this key regulatory body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A former journalist and ministerial adviser, Ms Sweeney spent six years at Meta, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was head of public policy, Ireland for Facebook before becoming WhatsApp\u2019s director of public policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She then joined Stripe as head of communications and most recently has been a director at London-headquartered communications firm Milltown Partners. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The DPC welcomed Ms Sweeney\u2019s appointment, adding it looked forward to \u201cworking with her as the DPC continues to uphold the EU\u2019s fundamental right to data protection\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The DPC and Meta have clashed a number of times in recent years. In December, the DPC, which is the main European regulator for Meta, fined the tech firm \u20ac251 million after investigations following a data breach, affecting 29 million Facebook accounts globally. Some three million of the affected accounts were based in the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former tech industry lobbyist Niamh Sweeney has been named to the Data Protection Commission, the chief regulator for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,7242,13169,18,19,17,26735,1722,46138],"class_list":{"0":"post-70559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-data-protection-commission","10":"tag-department-of-justice","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-jim-ocallaghan","15":"tag-meta","16":"tag-stripe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}