Monitoring Email and Internet at Work: The Proportionality Line
11 March 2026 · Mary Molloy Solicitors
Every employer monitors something — security tools scan everything by default — and every employee assumes something different about what is watched. The law's demand is alignment: monitoring must serve stated purposes, be disclosed in a policy that matches reality, and take the least intrusive form that achieves the purpose.
The policy is the battleground
Disputes rarely turn on whether monitoring is permissible in principle; they turn on whether this monitoring was covered by that policy. A policy saying security scanning happens does not authorise a manager reading a mailbox out of curiosity; a policy silent on personal use does not settle what happens when personal messages surface in a review. Employers should write policies describing what actually occurs; employees should read them as the map of what is visible.
Personal use and targeted review
Where personal use of work systems is tolerated, personal correspondence keeps a protected character, and wholesale reading of clearly private messages is where reviews become unlawful. The defensible model is targeted: a defined trigger (a specific well-founded concern, an absence requiring business continuity), a defined scope, filtering for relevance, and a record of who looked at what and why. 'We own the system' is not, and has never been, the analysis.
Consent will not save it
The contract clause consenting to monitoring is close to worthless as a lawful basis — employment consent is presumed unfree — so monitoring stands or falls on legitimate interests and proportionality. That cuts both ways: employers cannot hide behind signatures, and employees cannot assume a signed handbook legitimised everything in it. When monitoring data surfaces in a disciplinary process, its provenance is the first thing to test — and an access request is how you test it.
Read more in our main guide: Employee Monitoring: What Employers Can and Cannot Do · or back to the blog.
This page contains general information about Irish law and practice. It is not legal advice, it may not reflect your circumstances, and reading it does not create a solicitor–client relationship with Mary Molloy Solicitors. We do not advise on taxation; please speak to your accountant or Revenue. In contentious business, a solicitor may not calculate fees or other charges as a percentage or proportion of any award or settlement.