Employee loses unfair dismissal claim after IT logs showed her working from Spain
Darragh Mc Donagh
A financial services associate who was sacked after IT tracking records showed that she had been working from Spain in breach of her employer’s remote working policies has lost a claim for unfair dismissal.
Maite Gutierrez Fenoll had claimed that her employment was unfairly terminated by Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited on October 1st, 2024, following an internal investigation into her attendance and remote working logs.
She sought adjudication from the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, arguing that the decision to dismiss her for gross misconduct had been disproportionate and lacked legal foundation.
The hearing was told that Gutierrez Fenoll had worked for the firm since November 2021, earning an annual salary of between €54,500 and €57,000. She was transferred to the company’s estates department in late 2023.
The human resources department launched an investigation in July 2024 after noticing inconsistencies in her attendance and swipe-card records.
The company alleged that Gutierrez Fenoll had repeatedly breached its working-from-home policy and had wilfully attempted to manipulate the attendance system.
At the center of the dispute was an allegation that Gutierrez Fenoll had been logging into the company’s network while physically located in Spain.
Gutierrez Fenoll strongly denied the accusation, telling the WRC that she was in Dublin the entire time. She claimed that, while IT work was being carried out on her home internet connection, her computer had automatically logged in via her husband’s Spanish IT connection.
She explained that her husband lived in Ireland but worked in an e-commerce capacity for a Spanish company, and his connection had picked up her login attempts while her Irish network was offline. This, she argued, had given the false impression that she was abroad.
She further argued that irregularities in her office attendance records were the result of “tailgating” behind colleagues through the office doors, describing it as a well-known flaw in the building’s swipe system.
Interactive Brokers rejected her explanation, producing detailed electronic tracking records to support their decision. An IT expert from the firm gave technical evidence stating that, on the balance of probabilities, Gutierrez Fenoll’s explanation was impossible.
He testified that the electronic tracking logs and internet address records had proven conclusively that the logins had occurred from a physical address in Spain, rather than from Ireland.
The senior manager who conducted the disciplinary meetings testified that dismissal had been a difficult decision but became necessary due to a fundamental breakdown in trust.
She stated that Gutierrez Fenoll had regularly changed her explanations during the process and was not presenting a credible version of events, which was incompatible with her high-trust role.
In his decision, WRC adjudication officer Michael McEntee said the case had been characterised by excellent human resources procedures and was conducted in line with natural justice.
While the remote working issues themselves were serious, the “Spain/Not Spain” issue and the clocking irregularities were far more critical, McEntee said.
He found the worker’s explanation regarding the Spanish internet connection “very hard to accept” – especially given the expert testimony provided by the company’s IT specialist.
He concluded that it was the shifting stories that had ultimately decided the issue in favor of dismissal. Explaining that the WRC does not rerun employer decisions when they are procedurally correct, he upheld the company’s decision to dismiss Gutierrez Fenoll.
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