Facebook postponed deployment of a dating app in the European Union (EU) after the Republic of Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) expressed concerns about the company’s tardiness in delivering relevant documentation about the service.

DPC, Ireland’s supervisory authority for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), explained in a statement it was contacted by Facebook early last week regarding the launch of its Dating feature.

“We were very concerned that this was the first that we’d heard from Facebook Ireland about this new feature”, DPC stated, noting the social media company aimed to deploy the service today (13 February).

The commission was also concerned by a lack of information regarding the process of conducting a Data Protection Impact Assessment, along with the “decision-making processes that were undertaken by Facebook Ireland”.

DPC officers obtained documentation about the app after inspecting Facebook’s offices in Dublin on 10 February, the commission said.

A Facebook representative told BBC News the company had created “strong privacy safeguards” and completed the Data Protection Impact Assessment prior to the planned launch in Europe. It added it had shared the required information when requested by the authority.

“It’s really important that we get the launch of Facebook Dating right, so we are taking a bit more time to make sure the product is ready for the European market”, the company added.

Facebook unveiled plans to launch a dating service in May 2018, aiming to connect around 200 million users on the platform. It began rolling out the feature in the US and other select markets later that year.