General Statement
Galway County Council fully respects your right to privacy in relation to your interactions with this website. Any information which you volunteer will be treated with the highest standard of security and confidentiality, strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003. Galway County Council is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other linked websites.
Collection and Use of Personal Information
Galway County Council does not collect any personal data about you on this website, apart from information which you volunteer (for example by e-mailing the Council or by registering with a system). Any information which you provide in this manner is used by the Council only in line with the purpose for which it is provided and is not made available to any third parties, except as may be required by law or through voluntary cooperation with law enforcement authorities if we judge that such cooperation is necessary to combat fraud or other crime.
Galway County Council retain personal data of our clients in order to provide services (e.g. family details for housing applicants/tenants). It is the right of individuals to obtain copies of all personal information held by organisations such as ours. Requests for copies of the personal information we hold on you should be made in writing (where possible) to the Data Controller, Corporate Services, Galway County Council, Áras an Chontae, Prospect Hill, Galway. Alternatively you may contact the Data Controller by email (general@galwaycoco.ie), please clearly identify such email as being for the attention of the Data Controller or by using the comments form on this web site. Electronically submitted requests for copies of personal information will be subject to a verification process.
Use of Email
Email addresses are published throughout this site to enable you to contact us easily. Unencrypted email, as is used by the majority of our customers, is not secure and you are advised to take care if submitting personal information in this manner. By using the email address(es) advertised, users accept that any personal and sensitive data sent may not be fully secure. Alternative means of contacting Galway Co. Co. are published on our ‘contact us’ page and throughout our site.
Collection and Use of Technical Information
As you browse through our website, our web server collects information about your visit for statistical purposes. No personal information is collected.
Examples of information collected:
- Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet (e.g. 192.168.88.21).
- Email address – if you email any of our public email addresses.
- Computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, platform, referring URL and pages visited.
From this information we gather and monitor the following statistics
- The number of people who visit our site.
- The date and time of visits.
- The number of pages viewed.
- The time spent on the site.
- The most popular sections of our site.
Some web applications may install cookies on your computer to facilitate performance.
Galway County Council will make no attempt to identify individual visitors or to associate technical details listed above with any individual, except in cases of unauthorised access or activities with criminal intent. It is the policy of Galway County Council never to disclose such technical information in respect of individual website visitors to a third party, unless obliged to disclose such information by a rule of law. You should note that technical details, which we cannot associate with any identifiable individual, do not constitute personal information for the purposes of the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003.
Use of Cookies
Galway County Council use Google Analytics to monitor site usage. Cookies are required for Google Analytics to function.
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information provided by Google Analytics to help us improve the site’s structure and functionality. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form.
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. Web browsers allow control of cookie usage through the browser settings.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
Problem Resolution
Galway County Council have assigned the role of “Data Controller” to a specific individual. The Data Controller is responsible for ensuring the organisation comply with the Data Protection Act and to help our customers and suppliers resolve privacy issues. All data protection or privacy issues should be notified to the Data Protection Officer, Corporate Services, Galway County Council, Áras an Chontae, Prospect Hill, Galway. Alternatively you may contact the Data Controller by email (general@galwaycoco.ie), please clearly identify such email as being for the attention of the Data Controller.