LAST UPDATE | 34 mins ago

THE OPERATOR OF the Arnotts and Brown Thomas department stores has been ordered to pay €2,000 for unwanted spam marketing emails.

The Data Protection Commission brought the prosecution in Dublin District Court against Brown Thomas Arnotts Limited, which faced 21 charges under S.I. No. 336/2011 (European Communities (Electronic Communications Networks and Services) (Privacy and Electronic Communications) Regulations 2011).

The company pleaded guilty to five charges.

Two involved unsolicited emails without consent to two women on 3 December 2024 and 28 February 2025, who had not given prior consent to receive them.

The remaining three offences related to direct marketing emails to three men on 31 May 2025, 4 July 2025, and 28 August 2025, which lacked a valid address to enable them to “opt out” and request that the communications cease.

Judge Anthony Halpin noted the guilty plea and held that he would apply the Probation of Offenders Act, sparing the firm a recorded conviction, if it donated €1,000 to the Little Flower Penny Dinners charity and paid the same amount toward the prosecution’s costs.

The case has been adjourned until 5 October to confirm that the payments have been received and to finalise the matter.

The prosecution withdrew the remaining 16 counts.

In a statement, Brown Thomas Arnotts said it “acknowledges and accepts today’s outcome at Dublin District Court”.

“We deeply regret any frustration caused to a small number of our customers who were unable to unsubscribe from our email communications for a period in 2025,” it added.

Brown Thomas Arnotts said the issue was caused by a “technical fault with a third-party software provider” which meant that “some requests to unsubscribe didn’t go through as they should have”.

The company said this “affected fewer than 1% of the customers who tried to unsubscribe during that period” and that the issue has since been “fully rectified with no recurrence”.

Brown Thomas Arnotts added that “at no point was any customer’s data compromised”.

“We take our customers’ preferences and their trust in us very seriously,” said the company.

“We would like to apologise sincerely to any customer who experienced difficulty unsubscribing from our email communications during this period.”