The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has submitted a draft decision in a large scale inquiry into Facebook parent company Meta.

The investigation was launched in April 2021 after media reports highlighted that personal data of Facebook users had been made available on the internet.

The dataset was reported to contain personal data relating to approximately 533 million Facebook users worldwide.

The inquiry considered a number of features provided by Meta and whether the company had complied with its obligations regarding data protection.

The DPC submitted its draft decision to its fellow European data watchdogs on Friday 30 September for their views on it.

"This is part of the process under Article 60 of the GDPR, where the DPC sends draft decisions to other Concerned Supervisory Authorities," Deputy Data Protection Commissioner Graham Doyle said.

"They have one month to review the draft decision and raise any 'relevant and reasoned objections' that they may have," he said.

In a separate case, Meta last week lodged an appeal in the High Court against a record fine of €405m imposed on Instagram by the DPC for breaches related to the processing of children's data.