Maynooth University

This Practice Note examines data subject access requests (DSARs) under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (EU GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (Ireland) (DPA 2018 (IRL)). DSARs allow individuals, including employees, to access personal data held by controllers to verify the lawfulness of processing. They are the most frequent basis for complaints to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC). The note outlines employers’ obligations when receiving DSARs, including timelines, scope, and form of responses, as well as restrictions and rights to rectification and erasure. It also considers guidance from the DPC and the European Data Protection Board on practical compliance in the employment context.

BackgroundBy 2 December 2026, EU Member States must have implemented the Platform Work Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/2831) (PWD), which was adopted on 23 October 2024 and published on 11 November 2024. This Practice Note considers how reclassification (pursuant to Article 5) may be implemented in Ireland. The working assumption is that Ireland will consider its existing law (statutes and common law) on employment status as sufficient to implement the PWD.Before discussing the current content of the PWD, there is an important context into which the current version must be inserted. The headline of the original proposed directive was the presumption of employment for individuals providing services on labour platforms. The 9 December 2021 version of the proposed directive (COM(2021) 762 final) introduced the original presumption of employment framework, setting out a presumption of an employment relationship where a labour platform controls the performance of work. The presumption was triggered when two of five criteria were met (Article 4(2)). Since that time, the proposal has been significantly amended. For

This Checklist sets out employers’ considerations regarding policies and requests for flexible working arrangements.

This Checklist sets out employers’ considerations regarding policies and requests for remote and hybrid working arrangements.