Laws maybe, though these are set at the EU level (and one might argue about the greatness of GDPR).
Still, the rest of the EU (or at least Germany) is quite unhappy with the enforcement of these laws in Ireland. It is absurd that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is supposed to control the privacy of most larger tech corporations for the whole EU.
A few years ago, they only had 22 employees and their only office was literally co-located with a supermarket in the suburbs [1]. They got a second office since then and apparently are now at around 100 employees [2], but that is still quite small if you have to control giants like Google, Facebook and more.
So, from the outside it looks like Ireland's "strange relationships" also include privacy matters.
Still, the rest of the EU (or at least Germany) is quite unhappy with the enforcement of these laws in Ireland. It is absurd that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is supposed to control the privacy of most larger tech corporations for the whole EU. A few years ago, they only had 22 employees and their only office was literally co-located with a supermarket in the suburbs [1]. They got a second office since then and apparently are now at around 100 employees [2], but that is still quite small if you have to control giants like Google, Facebook and more.
So, from the outside it looks like Ireland's "strange relationships" also include privacy matters.
[1] https://www.gutjahr.biz/2012/07/facebook-eu-datenschutz/ [2] https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/news-media/press-releases/d...