Data Protection / Privacy Statement as of June 2009

Data Protection / Privacy Statement

This statement relates to the Health Service Executive (HSE) privacy practices in connection with this website. The HSE is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other websites which interlink with the HSE website. Any external links to other websites are clearly identifiable as such.

Copyright

©HSE
All rights are reserved. Extracts of the information on the website may be freely reviewed, reproduced or translated for research or private study but not for sale or for use in conjunction with commercial purposes. Any use of information on the website should be accompanied by an acknowledgement of the Health Service Executive as the source, citing the uniform resource locator (URL) of the article. Reproduction or translation of substantial portions of the website, or any use other than for educational or other non-commercial purposes, requires explicit, prior authorisation in writing. The permission to reproduce HSE copyright material does not extend to any material on this site which may be the property of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the copyright holders. Further enquiries may be directed to info.ntco@hse.ie

Disclaimer

Even though care has been taken in the preparation and publication of the contents of this web site, the Health Service Executive does not assume legal or other liability for any inaccuracy, mistake, mis-statement or any other error whatsoever nature contained herein. The Health Service Executive hereby formally disclaims liability in respect of such aforesaid matters. The information contained within this site is of a condensed and general information nature only and can change from time to time. It should not, by itself, be relied upon in determining legal rights or other decisions. Readers/users are advised to verify, by direct and live contact with the Health Service Executive, any information on which they may wish to rely. The Health Service Executive has endeavoured to attribute copyright or other intellectual right to the rightful owners where such course has been appropriate. Where any attribution has been missed or overlooked the Health Service Executive, on being informed, will correct and otherwise make good. The Health Service Executive has not reviewed any or all of the sites linked to its website and are not responsible for the content of any site linked to its website or any other pages. These links are provided only as a convenience.

Trademark

Any downloading, copying, use or reuse of the Health Service Executive logo, shall be unauthorised unless done with the written permission of the Health Service Executive.

General statement

By using this website, you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal data under the terms of this privacy statement. The HSE may change this privacy statement at any time. When it does, it will show on the new privacy statement its effective date1.

For the purposes of your use of www.tobaccoregister.ie, your data controller is the Health Service Executive. Please visit the website www.hse.ie for further information on data protection.

You may use these contact details, if you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, or the use of your personal data.

If you browse the website, no personal information is collected by the HSE. However we collect personal data as provided below.

Any personal data which is provided to the HSE will be collected and processed in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003 (as amended).


Collection and use of personal information

The HSE may collect personal data, when retailers apply for registration as persons carrying on the business of selling tobacco products by retail.

Any personal data which is provided in this way will be used by the HSE in carrying out its statutory responsibilities including without limitation, the administration of the National Register of Tobacco Retailers pursuant to Section 37 of the Public Health (Tobacco) Act 2002 as amended by the Public Health (Tobacco) (Amendment) Act 2004 (“the Acts”), performing regulatory checks in relation to compliance with the Acts. The personal data may also be anonymised and used for statistical purposes.

When a payment is made online by credit card, the HSE collects such credit card information. This personal data is used for the purposes of processing the payments, communicating with the person concerned, including responding to questions and generally carrying out the statutory functions of the HSE.

The HSE may collect personal data through cookies and also collect statistical information from our internet service provider. See in both cases below under technical Information.


Disclosure of personal data

Personal data may in certain circumstances be disclosed to authorised officers of the Health Service Executive or third parties, in order to comply with any legal process, for the purpose of instituting a prosecution whether for an offence under the Acts or any further amendment thereof or under any other applicable law.

Personal data may also be disclosed to service providers within the EU who provide data processing services to the HSE. However in such cases, the HSE will put in place with such service providers an agreement to ensure that the personal information is used only for such purposes, is processed in accordance with the Acts and is kept secure.

Your rights regarding data supplied via this website

Where you are an individual, you have a right to be given a copy of your personal data which you may have supplied via this website. To exercise this right, you must write to the HSE at the National Tobacco Control Office, Health Service Executive, Oak House, Millennium Park, Naas, County Kildare or e-mail info.tobaccoregister@hse.ie. You should include any personal identifiers which you supplied earlier via the website (e.g. name; address; phone number; e-mail address) and provide such other personal identifiers as the HSE may reasonably request. Your request will be dealt with as soon as possible and will take not more than 40 days to process.

You also have a right where you are an individual, to have inaccurate information corrected. If you discover that the HSE does hold inaccurate information about you, you have a right to instruct the HSE to correct that information. Such an instruction must be in writing or via e-mail. A request will be dealt with as soon as possible and will subject to the next sentence, take not more than 40 days to process. The HSE may require evidence of your identity and address, in order to process such a request.

In certain circumstance (subject to the requirements pertaining to registration under the Acts) you may also request that personal data which you have supplied via the website be deleted. To exercise this right you would generally be expected to identify some contravention of data protection law in the manner in which the HSE processes the data concerned.


Complaints about data processed via the website

If you are concerned about how personal data is processed via this website, please do not hesitate to bring such concerns to the attention of the HSE National Tobacco Control Office at 045 988204.

Collecting Technical Information

A cookie is a small piece of information, stored in simple text files, placed on your computer by a website. Cookies can be read by the website on a visitor’s subsequent visits. The information stored in a cookie may relate to the visitor’s browsing habits on the web page, or a unique identification number so that the website can "remember" you on your return visit.

This website does use cookies, to track a visitor’s progress through the website and also to allow us maintain the security and integrity of the data being used.You are entitled to refuse to have a cookie placed on your computer. Accordingly, you can disable a cookie at any time by adjusting your browser [before you access the HSE tobacco register website]. In such case, the HSE tobacco register website, will switch to URL direction and you will still be able to use the online registration service.

Technical details in connection with visits to this website are logged by our internet service provider for our statistical purposes. No information is collected that could be used by us to identify website visitors. The technical details logged are confined to the following items:

  • the IP address of the visitor’s web server
  • 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 web site (for example pages accessed and documents downloaded)
  • the type of web browser used by the website visitor.

The HSE will make no attempt to identify individual visitors from these technical details, or to associate the technical details listed above with any individual. The HSE will not disclose such technical information in respect of individual website visitors to any third party (apart from our internet service provider, which records such data on the HSE’s behalf and which is bound by confidentiality provisions in this regard), unless obliged to disclose such information by a rule of law. The technical information will be used only by the HSE, and only for statistical and other administrative purposes. Technical details, which the HSE cannot associate with any identifiable individual, do not constitute "personal data" for the purposes of the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003.