Ireland, Facebook's European base, pushed to act on 'safe harbour' ruling

European court of justice struck down provisions allowing transfer of EU citizens' data to the US after Austrian student argued NSA might get access to it

Ireland has said it plans to investigate the transfer of data on Facebook users in Europe to the United States after an EU court invalidated the "safe harbour" provisions under which it took place.

It follows a request by Austrian citizen Max Schrems to the Irish data protection commissioner to investigate if there was adequate protection of his data transferred to the US by Facebook, which has its European headquarters in Dublin.