EIR HAS SAID that some of its customers have had a tranche of their emails deleted due to an error during an IT upgrade.

The emails deleted were more than 45 days old and could not be recovered, the company said.

A statement from eir said: “During an IT upgrade eir webmail data was being moved to a new server, an issue occurred and emails greater than 45 days old were inadvertently deleted and could not be recovered.

“An investigation was immediately launched and eir can confirm approximately 4% of webmail customers have been impacted.

“The investigation is underway and the root cause of the issue has been identified. Measures have been put in place to ensure this issue will not happen again.

Eir apologised to those affected for the loss of their emails, and said they will be given compensation.

Any customer impacted can contact Eir by emailing eirwebmailsupport-gp@eir.ie.

“We will work with them to examine if it is possible to recover lost data that may be held locally on their computers.

“Some customers will be able to recover lost data through their local email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, where emails may be saved locally on their computers.”

In February 2020, Eir told its customers who used the eircom.net email service that they would face a monthly charge to continue using it from the end of March.

The €5.99 monthly charge would be used “be used to invest in the maintenance and improvement of the service going forward,” the spokesperson said at the time.