Westmeath County Council (WCC) Our Services

Privacy Notice

Westmeath County Council is committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services. Westmeath County Council is a data controller and a data processor. The Privacy Notice below explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

Our Data Protection Officer (DPO) makes sure we respect your rights and follow the law. If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer at dpo@westmeathcoco.ie or by calling 044-9332000 and asking to speak to the Data Protection Officer.

What is personal data/information?

Personal data is any information that can identify an individual person. This includes a name, an ID number, location data (i.e. location data collected by a mobile phone) or a postal address, online browsing history, images or anything related to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of a person.

Certain personal data has been identified as in a “special category”. This includes:

sexuality and sexual health
religious beliefs
ethnicity
physical or mental health
trade union membership
political opinion
genetic/biometric data
criminal history

Why do we need your personal data?

We need your personal data to:

fulfill our legal obligations as a local authority to provide a service and support to you
investigate complaints received about our services
keep track of spending by Westmeath County Council
comply with Employment Law
comply with Health and Safety law.

We only use what we need!

Where we can, we will only collect and use personal information if we need it to deliver a service or meet a requirement. If we don't need personal information we won't ask you for it, and even if we already have your information from something else we will only use it in cases where we have specifically asked for it - you will remain anonymous in all other instances. For example; in a survey we may not need your contact details and therefore we will only collect your survey responses.

If we use your personal information for research and analysis, we will always keep you anonymous or use a different name unless you’ve agreed that your personal information can be used for that research.

We will not sell your personal information to any other organisation or person. We are legally obliged to make the Edited Electoral Register available which contains the names of individuals who have opted-in to be listed when registering for the Electoral College. A nominal fee is charged for this register.

Your rights

As an individual whose personal data is processed by Westmeath County Council you have the following rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us.

1. The Right to be Informed

This privacy notice provides you with some of the high level information required. Specific privacy notices are provided on the various functions of the Council.

2. The Right to Access Information

You have the right to ask for all the data/information we have about you and the services you receive from us. When we receive a request from you we must give you access to everything we have recorded on you within one calendar month.

If you wish to make a request to view your records please email dpo@westmeathcoco.ie. However, we can’t let you see any parts of your record which contain:

confidential information about other people or
data a professional thinks will cause serious harm to your or someone else’s physical or mental wellbeing or
if we think that giving you the information may stop us from preventing or detecting a crime.

This applies to personal data/information that is in both paper and electronic records. If you ask us, we’ll also let others see your record (except if one of the points above applies).

3. The right to rectification

If your personal data is inaccurate we will correct it without undue delay. Please let us know what the correct information is so we can correct it.

If the personal data we hold on you is incomplete, please provide us with the supplementary information, so we can complete the information we hold.

4. The right to Erasure (right to be forgotten)

In some circumstances you can ask for your personal data/information to be deleted, for example:

where your personal data/information is no longer needed for the reason why it was collected in the first place
where you have removed your consent for us to use your information (where there is no other legal reason for us to use it)
where there is no legal reason for the use of your information
where deleting the information is a legal requirement

Where your personal information has been shared with others, we’ll do what we can to make sure those using your personal information comply with your request for erasure.

Please note that we can’t delete your information where:

we are required to have it by law
it is used for freedom of expression
it is used for public health purposes
it is for, scientific or historical research, or statistical purposes where it would make information unusable
it is necessary for legal claims.

5. The right to data portability

You have the right to ask for your personal information to be given back to you or another service provider of your choice in a commonly used format. This is called data portability.

However, this only applies if we’re using your personal data with consent (not if we are required by law), if the processing is carried out by automated means, or where processing is conducted on the basis of a contract between us.

6. The right to object to processing of personal data

You have the right to object to certain types of processing of your personal data where it is done in the public interest or under official authority. This is the processing that we do in the local authority.

However, if this request is approved this may cause delays or prevent us delivering that service.

7. The right of restriction

You have the right to ask us to stop or restrict what we use your personal data for.

When data is restricted, it cannot be used other than to securely store the data, and with your consent to handle legal claims and protect others, or where it’s in the public interest.

Where restriction of use has been granted, we will inform you before we carry on using your personal information.

You have the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for any council service. However, if this request is approved this may cause delays or prevent us delivering that service.

Where possible we will seek to comply with your request, but we may need to hold or use information because we are required to by law.

8. The right not to be subject to automated decision making, including profiling

You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing. Processing is “automated” where it is carried out without human intervention and where it produces legal effects or significantly affects you.

Automated processing is permitted with your express consent, where necessary for the performance of a contract or when authorised by European Union or Irish law.

The Council does not currently use automated processing.

Who do we share your information with?

We use a range of organisations to either store personal information or help deliver our services to you. Where we have these arrangements there is always an agreement in place to make sure that the organisation complies with data protection law. The specific privacy notices will detail which organisations we share information with for which purposes and services.

We will often complete a data privacy impact assessment (DPIA) before we share personal information to make sure we protect your privacy and comply with the law.

Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations.

This includes:

The Courts;
An Garda Síochana;
Garda Ombudsman;
Revenue;

We may also share your personal information when we feel there’s a good reason that’s more important than protecting your privacy. This doesn’t happen often, but we may share your information:

in order to find and stop crime and fraud or
if there are serious risks to the public, our staff or to
other professionals.

For all of these reasons the risk must be serious before we can override your right to privacy.

How do we protect your information?

We will do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and we will only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security include:

Encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code or what’s called a ‘cypher’. The hidden information is said to then be ‘encrypted’
Pseudonymisation, meaning that we’ll use a different name so we can hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of the Council could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours
controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
controlling access to the building and to the filing cabinets
training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
Regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches).

You can find more details of our Information Security expectations on our online policy.

Where Can I get advice?

If you have any worries or questions about how your personal information is handled please contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo@westmeathcoco.ie or by calling 044-9332000.

You can also get advice on data protection from the Data Protection Commissioner at: info@dataprotection.ie

or

The Data Protection, Commissioner, Canal House, Station Road, Portarlington, Co. Laois Tel: 0761 104 800 or LoCall 1890 252231

or

https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/Home/4.htm or http://gdprandyou.ie/

Making a Complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission if you consider the processing of your personal data is contrary to the GDPR or Data Protection Act 2018.

Complaints to the Commission should be made in writing and addressed to: info@dataprotection.ie
or
The Data Protection, Commissioner, Canal House, Station Road, Portarlington, Co. Laois Tel: 0761 104 800 or LoCall 1890 252231.

Cookies and how you use this website

To make this website easier to use, we sometimes place small text files on your device (for example your mobile phone, iPad or laptop) called cookies. Most big websites do this too.

They improve things by:

remembering the things you’ve chosen while on our website, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
remembering data you’ve given (for example, your address) so you don’t need to keep entering it
measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs

By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device.

We don’t use cookies on this website that collect information about what other websites you visit (often referred to as privacy intrusive cookies).

Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. You can manage and/or delete these files as you wish.

To learn more about cookies and how to manage them, visit AboutCookies.org or watch a video about cookies.

How you use this website (something called Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting peoples’ needs and to understand how we can make the website work better.

Google Analytics stores information about what pages on this site you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on while you are here.

We do not collect or store any other personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this data cannot be used to identify who you are.

Name	Typical Content	Expires
_cfduid	Randomly generated number	1 month
_utma	randomly generated number	2 years
_utmb	randomly generated number	30 minutes
_utmc	randomly generated number	when you close your browser
_utmt	randomly generated number	2 years
_utmz	randomly generated number and data on how the site was reached (e.g. direct or via a link, organic search or paid search)	6 months

We also collect data on the number of times a word is searched for and the number of failed searches. We use this information to improve access to the site and identify gaps in the content and see if it is something we should add to the site.

Unless the law allows us to, we do not:

share any of the data we collect about you with others, or
- use this data to identify individuals

Other people’s cookies

We use feeds from other websites such as Facebook and Twitter. These websites place cookies on your device when watching or viewing these pages.

Below are links to their cookie policies:

Turning off cookies

You can stop cookies being downloaded on to your computer or other device by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. If you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.

There is more information about how to delete or stop using cookies on AboutCookies.org. You can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.