The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal from the Data Protection Commission (DPC) on a point of law arising from the commission’s decision to fine social media giant TikTok €530 million and direct it to stop sending user data to China.
In April 2025, following a lengthy investigation, the DPC concluded that TikTok breached the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules in sending information to China to be accessed by engineers.
Along with orders directing TikTok to suspend the data transfers and ensure compliance with data-privacy laws, the DPC also imposed the €530 million fine.
When the company, which is owned by Chinese corporation ByteDance, appealed the decision to the High Court, that court granted a stay on the orders directed against TikTok. The stay on the orders remains in place pending the outcome of the case.
RM Block
The obligation to pay the fine was automatically stayed upon the case being taken to the High Court.
Following the granting of the stay, the DPC took a case to the Supreme Court on the issue of whether the correct test to be applied when granting a stay was one of national or EU law.
On Thursday, the court dismissed the DPC appeal in an unanimous decision and found that the legal test governing a stay on a decision of the DPC was properly one of national law. It has delayed publication of two concurring judgments in the case pending submissions next week on whether aspects of the rulings should be redacted.
The judgments delivered on Thursday were by Judge Brian Murray and Judge Gerard Hogan, with the other judges concurring with both. Summaries of both were outlined in open court and released afterwards.
In the summary of his judgment, Murray said a court must strike a balance between irreparable harm caused to a party in the event a stay is not imposed, and damage to the public interest or the rights of third parties in the administration of the statutory scheme being operated by the DPC, if the stay is granted.
He said harm to a party should be examined cognisant of the fact that, usually, irrecoverable expense incurred in complying with a regulatory decision is properly understood as a cost of conducting business in certain sectors of the economy, and an inevitable consequence of decisions of the Oireachtas to establish powers of regulation in that field.
Noting that the High Court case is proceeding at a rapid pace, he decided that the most sensible decision was to allow the stay granted by Judge Rory Mulcahy to continue.
Hogan, in his judgment, said the stay involves a regulatory decision with far-reaching consequences for the industry concerned and for consumers, and could be regarded as close to those cases where there is an application for a stay on the operation of a legislative instrument, classically pending the outcome of a constitutional challenge.
On the issue of whether Irish law had been “ousted” by EU law in this case, Hogan found that, contrary to the submission from the regulator, the decision involving TikTok was not one made jointly with other supervisory authorities but rather was one made by DPC as lead supervisory authority.
He also rejected, according to the summary, arguments from the DPC that “our national law in respect of stays on regulatory decisions would undermine the full effectiveness of EU law.”
The judge also ruled that there was no obligation to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice “given that the initial stay will quickly be overtaken by events”.
