The Data Protection Commissioner and Google have urged the High Court to overturn a finding in favour of a man in the first “right to be forgotten” case in Ireland.

If the Circuit Court ruling in favour of Mark Savage is upheld, it will impose an “intolerable and unworkable” burden on Google and other search engines, Cian Ferriter SC, for Google Inc and Google Ireland, argued.

Search engines may have to review billions of searches daily to decide if quotation marks, in line with the Circuit Court decision, must be placed around posts considered to be “opinion” rather than fact, he said.

Mr Savage, Lios Cian, Swords, an Independent candidate in the 2014 local elections in north Co Dublin, won orders from the Circuit Court last October that he was entitled to have information posted about him on Reddit removed by Google.

‘Hedonistic’

Mr Savage objects to a thread on the website Reddit describing him as “Mark Savage — North County Dublins (sic) homophobic candidate”.

The thread arose from election leaflets handed out during his campaign referring to “gay perverts cavorting en flagrante on the beach on broad daylight”.

The leaflet contended the “hedonistic” activity of “cruisin” (sic) denigrates the institution of marriage.

In postings responding to what was said on Reddit, Mr Savage argued that being “disgusted” by gays is very different to hating them and objected to the term “homophobic”. He complained the link to the thread was listed in Google’s search results when his name was entered into the search engine.

After Google refused to re-index the thread, he complained to the Data Protection Commissioner who rejected the complaint on the grounds thath an internet user seeking out information on the local elections is unlikely to consult an online discussion forum as a source of verified facts.

Mr Savage appealed the commissioner’s finding to the Circuit Court, which upheld his appeal. Judge Elma Sheehan ruled Mr Savage’s fundamental rights and legitimate interests were prejudiced.

The appeal by the Data Protection Commissioner and Google Ireland and Google Inc, notice parties to the case, against that finding opened on Thursday before Mr Justice Michael White.

It involves interpretation of provisions of the Data Protection Acts and a range of legal decisions, including a 2014 case, the “Google Spain” case. That established the “right to be forgotten” – where a person can seek to have personal data held by a third-party website delisted from a data controller’s search engine.

The case continues on Friday.