It's not a case of lax enforcement, it's simply a case of David vs Goliath. Ireland, as a country has a population of 5 million and is 1/8th the Size of Texas.

It's not a case of lax enforcement, it's simply a case of David vs Goliath. Ireland, as a country has a population of 5 million and is 1/8th the Size of Texas. The nearest comparable European capital, London, has a population of 9 million. GDPR was only introduced in 2018. Since then the Irish DPC has transformed from a small regionally-based office of 27 staff into an independent pan-EU regulatory body of ~250 SMEs and support staff. In 2022 the Irish DPC was responsible for more than €1bn in GDPR fines issued out of a European total of €1.64bn. In May 2023 they charged Meta with a €405m fine for violations relating to children’s privacy on Instagram, in November 2023 they followed up with a €1.2bn fine for its Facebook data transfers between the EU and the US, which is the largest GDPR fine issued to date. Not only has the Irish DPC leveraged the largest fines in GDPR history against US MNCs for egregious Data Protection breaches, each time they do so they're hauled out in front of the US media to justify their decisions: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/24/irish-data-regulator-defends-1point3-billion-meta-fine.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/24/irish-data-regulator-defends... While I'm an avid supporter of Max Schrems and NOYB in particular, and am very vocal about the failings of both Helen Dixon and the Irish government in terms of ramping up our Data Protectorate function to meet the role of Federal Overseer that we accidentally found ourselves in, it's simply a case of cutting our cloth according to our measure.