Privacy statement

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Privacy statement

Privacy Statement

The National Archives is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and employs appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information from unauthorised access. The National Archives will not process your personal data for any purpose other than that for which they were collected. Personal data may be exchanged with our parent department, the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, or other public bodies, in certain circumstances where this is provided for by law.

The National Archives will only retain your personal data for as long as it is necessary for the purposes for which they were collected and subsequently processed. When the business need to retain this information has expired, it will be examined with a view to destroying the personal data as soon as possible, and in line with Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media’s policy. Further information on Data Protection can be found on the website of our parent department at: https://www.chg.gov.ie/help/legal-notices/data-protection/

All personal data processed by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media will take place in accordance with the law on data protection and will only be for the purposes connected to the functions of this Department.

Department staff are also considered customers of the Department from a data protection perspective and may exercise their data protection rights in the same way.

The Department is fully committed to keeping all personal data submitted by its customers, fully safe and secure during administrative processes.  All necessary technical measures have been put in place to ensure the safety and security of the systems which hold this data.

Data Protection information will be updated on this page from time to time.

Legislation

The current legislation for Data Protection in Ireland is the Data Protection Act 1988 as amended by the 2003 Data Protection Act.  The General Data Protection Regulations (EU 2016/679) will come into effect on 25 May 2018.

Who is the Data Controller?

The Data Controller for the collection and processing of all personal data in the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media is the Department itself.

How do I contact the Data Protection Officer?

The Data Protection Officer can be contacted as follows:

Data Protection Officer
Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
23 Kildare Street
D02 TD30

Email:  [email protected]

Data Protection Policy

The Department’s Data Protection Policy can be found here.

What are my rights under Data Protection legislation?

When you, as a customer, provide personal data to the Department, you have certain rights available to you in relation to that data. However, it should be noted that not all rights listed shall be applicable in every circumstance. These rights are outlined below and can be exercised by contacting the Data Protection Officer, as detailed above, indicating which right(s) you wish to exercise:

  • Access to your personal data – click here for information on the right to access, including how to submit a Subject Access Request;
  • Rectification of your personal data;
  • Data portability;
  • Restriction of the processing of your personal data;
  • Objection to the processing of your personal data;
  • Withdrawing consent if previously given to the processing of your personal data;
  • Erasure of your personal data;
  • Right to lodge a complaint with the Supervisory Authority (Data Protection Commission, Canal House, Station Road, Portarlington, Co. Laois R32 AP23 – dataprotection.ie);

Are there any restrictions?

Yes – Section 61(1) allows for restrictions on the exercise of the rights of data subjects where processing is for archiving purposes in the public interest. The rights of a data subject set out in Articles 15 (right of access), 16 (right to rectification), 18 (right to restrictions of processing), 19 (right to notification of rectification, erasure or restriction of processing of personal data), 20 (right to data portability), and 21 (right to object) of the GDPR are restricted to the extent that:

  1. the exercise of any of those rights would be likely to render impossible, or seriously impair, the achievement of those purposes, and
  2. such restriction is necessary for the fulfilment of those purposes.

Where processing is taking place at the same time for any other purpose, other than archiving purposes in the public interest, these restrictions will only apply to processing for archiving purposes in the public interest.

Where will my personal information be shared?

At all times, your personal data will only be shared where there is a valid legal basis to do so and in accordance with the appropriate Data Protection legislation.

Parliamentary Questions and Representations from Public Representatives

In replying to Parliamentary Question requests, all personal information is taken out of the reply which later goes to form the public record.

Information processed for this purpose will only be retained for as long as there is a business need to do so and thereafter will be marked for deletion and will be destroyed in line with internal guidelines or guidelines for destruction received from the National Archives of Ireland or associated permissions received from them.

Anonymising or pseudonymising personal data

Where possible, the Department may anonymise or pseudonymise (mask) personal data so that the personal data will only be available to those who have a clear business need to see it.

Technical information on data collected

Technical information on the cookies used on our Department’s website is available here.

Record of Processing Activities  (ROPA)

The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) came into force in May 2018, in which Article 30 included a requirement for all public bodies to produce a Record of Processing Activities, or a ROPA.

This document is an inclusive and non-exhaustive list of the processes undertaken by sections within the Department that utilise personal data; by nature it takes the form of a living document, which will be updated regularly with changes and amendments. If you have any queries regarding specific processes which utilise personal data that are not covered by this document, please contact the Data Protection Officer, as detailed above.

Collection and Use of Personal Information

The National Archives respects the rights of its users and does not collect any personal data about you on its website.

By contacting us via email, you may be sending us personal information such as your name, address, and email address. We may store your name, address and email address in order to respond to your request or otherwise resolve the subject matter of the email.

Where a user voluntarily provides personal information, this data will be used only for the purposes for which it is provided, and not passed to any third party, unless obliged to disclose such information by a rule of law.

Collection and Use of Technical Information

Technical details in connection with visits to the National Archives’ websites are logged for statistical and other administrative purposes. No information is collected that could be used by the National Archives to identify website visitors. The details logged are confined to the following items:

  • The IP address of the visitor’s web client;
  • The top-level domain name used (for example .ie, .com, .org, .net);
  • The previous website address from which the visitor reached us, including any search terms used;
  • Clickstream data which shows the traffic of visitors around this website (for example, webpages accessed and documents downloaded);
  • The type of web browser used by the website visitor.

The National Archives will make no attempt to identify individual visitors, or to associate the technical details listed above with any individual except in the investigation of any inappropriate or malicious use of the National Archives’ website itself. It is the policy of the National Archives never to disclose any technical information in respect of individual website visitors to any third party, unless legally obliged to make such disclosure.

Use of cookies on our website

The National Archives’ websites use SiteImprove to help analyse how users use the sites. This analytical tool uses ‘cookies’, which are text files placed on your computer, to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) is transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. This information is then used to evaluate your use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity for the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

The National Archives will not (and will not allow any third party) to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to our sites. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any source as part of our use of the Google statistical analytics tool. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither the National Archives nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user.

The National Archives will also use a simple cookie to record that a site visitor has acknowledged the use of cookies on this site. This is to prevent the visitor being shown the pop-up advisement each time they visit the site but will not collect or store any other information about the visitor.

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser as outlined in the links below. However, this can affect your browsing experience and some services on this site and others may not function properly, or at all. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Google Chrome Browser
Microsoft Internet Explorer Browser
Mozilla Firefox Browser
Apple Safari Browser
Opera Web Browser