The State's data protection commissioner is to hold talks with his European counterparts following revelations that the US monitors international banking transactions.
The disclosure that the US authorities received co-operation from the Brussels-based clearing house Swift emerged late last month in the New York Times, infuriating US president George W Bush.
Speaking yesterday, data protection commissioner Billy Hawkes said: "We are examining the issue from the point of view of protecting the rights to privacy of Irish citizens.
"If there is an issue that affects all European citizens we expect to be in close contact with our European colleagues on the appropriate response to this," he told The Irish Times.
Swift, which is a private company, processes money transfers for all the main Irish banks. It has admitted that it complied with a US subpoena that it hand over its financial records.
The Bush administration has defended its action, arguing that international transactions must be scrutinised by the CIA in its efforts to seize al-Qaeda's finances.
Expressing concerns about the potential privacy infringements, Mr Hawkes said Irish financial institutions have been required by law since 1994 to report suspicious transactions to the Garda.
The European Commission has already said that EU law does not cover the handing over of financial data by Swift. The European Parliament will debate the US action on Monday.
Belgium prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has already ordered an investigation into the activities of Swift, which is regulated by the Belgian central bank and is subject to Belgian law.
Meanwhile, Privacy International, a London-based non-governmental organisation, has filed complaints with 33 national data protection regulators, including Mr Hawkes, about the US action.
Privacy International argues that the monitoring was carried out illegally, and that "the scale of the operation, involving millions of records" showed that it was "a fishing exercise rather than a legally-authorised investigation".
