Seán Quinn son-in-law says he made ‘right to be forgotten’ requests

A son-in-law of former billionaire Seán Quinn, Niall McPartland, has confirmed he made the requests that led to articles about the family being "delisted" from Google.

Last week it emerged the search engine had delisted 74 items from The Irish Times concerning Mr Quinn and his adult children after successful applications under the EU’s “right to be forgotten” regime.

The consequence of the delisting is that articles which previously would have displayed on Google under certain search terms no longer will and therefore become harder to find.

However, they remain available on Google if other search terms are used and are also in The Irish Times archive.

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Mr McPartland, husband of Mr Quinn's daughter Ciara Quinn, said on Monday he had made the requests of his own volition and had not told the Quinn family about the application in advance, because "it has nothing whatsoever to do with Seán Quinn".

“It [the application] was for my name exclusively,” he said.

Mr McPartland said he made the requests for a number of reasons, stating some were “inaccurate, outdated and relating to proceedings which have long since been resolved”.

He referred to an article about his wedding 14 years ago that went into detail about the cost and expense of the celebration.

“That material is not relevant to who I am. I don’t think people should form their opinions of me based on what comes up on a search engine,” he added.

Mr McPartland said it was “regretful” that the Quinn family was “wrongly accused” of making the application, adding that the approach by the media was not in the spirit of the ruling.

Under a 2014 ruling of the European Court of Justice, and subsequent EU data protection laws, people can request that certain items no longer appear when internet searches are carried out using their name, if they can successfully argue that their case meets certain criteria.

Under this “right to be forgotten” rule, search engine operators such as Google can review the request and decide whether to accede to it or not. If they do, they inform the web page host that the decision has been made in relation to the URLs (web page addresses) affected.

The Irish Times was informed in September and October that several of its articles had been delisted. Research has now confirmed that they related to the Quinn family.

The delistings mostly concern items associated with the family's attempt to frustrate the State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) from asserting control over an international property portfolio that was worth hundreds of millions of euro.

The Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner have also reported that several of their articles have also been affected under this ruling.