Mr. Peter Feeney:

A lot of the complaints we get that are more than three months old and are about the right to be forgotten are from people who want to erase the public record about previous criminal convictions such as drink driving and speeding. Much of it has to do with what is already public record information. Editors are very reluctant to take down public record information because it distorts the historical fact that someone was convicted. There is a case to be made that people have a right to re-establish their reputation. I will give an example from my time working in RTÉ. A man contacted me in RTÉ to say his son was reaching secondary school age and he had the same Christian name and surname as the father. He was worried his school friends would Google this boy's name and find the father had a minor conviction from 20 years ago. I absolutely sympathised with this because it seemed to be unfair that this minor conviction should still be accessible 20 years later. It was doubly unfair the man's child could be tarnished with this brush.

The right to be forgotten is important. It is quite nuanced and we have to get the balance right. We should not erase material that is significant. It may well be that a criminal prosecution 20 years ago is still relevant today because the person may still be a criminal but there is a balance to be drawn if people have done their time and re-established their reputations. Many people are unaware of it. People are not aware of how it works. Perhaps the European Commission could fund advertising about the right to be forgotten, informing people about how to go about the process. It may well fall under the new commission.