Privacy & Cookies

IHCA Privacy Notice

Your privacy is very important to us, which is why we make sure you are always in control of what we do with your personal information.

We fully respect your right to privacy and to protection of your personal data. Any personal information which you provide to us will be treated strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Acts 1988 to 2018 and GDPR. We ask that you read this privacy statement ('Statement') carefully as it contains important information as to how we use your personal data.

The Information We Collect About You

We collect information to provide you with a better experience of using our website and applications and to facilitate our audiences, and visitors to the IHCA website. In order to provide you with access to certain services or data within our websites and applications, or to our services and IHCA facilities we may require that you provide certain personal information. This information may include:

  • Your name, postal address, telephone number, fax number, e-mail address, subscriber name or screen name, password used to access our services, and/or method of payment of membership fees;

  • personal data related to your professional status, your MCN number, your title, your practice locations, your area of speciality; 

  • information we collect via cookies or similar technology stored on your device about how you use our website;

  • your IP address;

  • information from our web servers about online activity;

  • information you provide if you report a problem with our website or services

We will collect and process your personal information in accordance with this Notice.

If you make an enquiry via our website, on the telephone or via email, or via any third party, we will collect the information you provide to us.

Visitors are advised that each time they visit a Website, two general levels of information about their visit can be retained. The first level comprises statistical and other analytical information collected on an aggregate and non-individual specific basis of all browsers who visit the site. The second is information which is personal or particular to a specific visitor who knowingly chooses to provide that information.

The statistical and analytical information provides general and not individually specific information about the number of people who visit this Website; the number of people who return to this site; the pages that they visit; where they were before they came to this site and the page in the site at which they exited. This information helps us monitor traffic on our Website so that we can manage the site’s capacity and efficiency. It also helps us to understand which parts of this site are most popular and generally to assess user behaviour and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the site.

Through this Website you may have an opportunity to send us information, such as through the "registration" pages or any other area where you may send e-mails, provide feedback, etc. By choosing to participate in these, you will be providing us with some level of personal information relating to you. This information will only be used by this site for:

  1. The purposes for which it was provided by you;

  2. Verification purposes and statistical analysis; and

  3. Marketing and administration purposes.

Collection and use of personal information

Personal information: information that is associated with your name or personal identity. This Website does not collect any personal data about you apart from information which you volunteer (for example, by emailing us, or registering with us). Any information which you provide in this way is not made available to any third parties, and is used by this site only in line with the purpose for which you provided it.

Collection and use of non-personal information

Non-personal information: data collected for statistical purposes which is not associated with a specific identity. This site collects and analyses technical information in order to evaluate our Website. The type of technical information we log is confined to the following:

  • The IP address*1 of the visitor’s Web server

  • The top-level domain-name used (for example .ie, .com, .org, .net)

  • The pages visited on the this site Website, i.e. URL’s*2 visited

  • 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, pages accessed)

*1 An IP address is an identifier for a computer or device on a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network, such as the World Wide Web. Networks use the TCP/IP protocol to route information based on the IP address of the destination. In other words, an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web, allowing Web servers to locate and identify your computer. Computers require IP addresses in order for users to communicate on the Internet, browse and shop.

*2 A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web.

Data Protection Rights Explained

You have a number of rights which you may exercise in respect of your personal data. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please email info@ihca.ie detailing the right that you wish to exercise together with official documentation confirming your identity such as passport, driving licence. We must respond to you without delay and in any event within one month (subject to limited extensions). You are entitled to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commissioner if you are not happy with our response when you choose to exercise any of your rights below. The following are a synopsis of your data protection rights. We are allowed to refuse your request in certain limited circumstances. If this arises we will let you know.

Right to information - You have a right to certain information in relation to your personal data.

Right of access - You have the right to receive information from us in relation to the personal data that we hold about you.

Right of erasure/right to be forgotten - This is your right to have information which we hold in relation to you deleted in certain circumstances.

Right to rectification - This is your right to have inaccurate personal data held by us concerning you corrected and incomplete personal data completed.

Right to object It is your right to object to the processing of your personal data by us but only where we are processing the personal data on the grounds of legitimate interest.

Right to restriction It is your right to require us to limit the processing of your personal data where certain circumstances arise.

Right to data portability This is a right to have your personal information transferred in an electronic and structured form to you or to another party This enables you to take your data from us in an electronically useable format and to be able to transfer your data to another party in an electronically useable format.

Right to object to automated decision making including profiling This is a right not to be the subject of automated decision-making by us using your personal information or profiling of you.

Right to withdraw consent where we are processing your personal data on the grounds of consent you have a right to withdraw your consent to the processing.

The IHCA at all times reserves the right to process personal data for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

Security of Your Personal Data

Any personal information that the IHCA collects about you will be treated with the highest standards of security and confidentiality, strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 to 2018 and the GDPR.

Legal Basis for processing your personal data

Article 6(1)(b): processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract.

Article 9(2)(d): processing is carried out in the course of its legitimate activities with appropriate safeguards by a foundation, association or any other not-for-profit body with a political, philosophical, religious or trade union aim and on condition that the processing relates solely to the members or to former members of the body or to persons who have regular contact with it in connection with its purposes and that the personal data are not disclosed outside that body without the consent of the data subjects.

Retention and Use of Your Personal Data

Use of your personal data – why and for how long:

We will only process any personal data, which you provide to us in accordance with the purpose for which it was provided. If you are an IHCA member we shall use your personal data to provide member services to you in accordance with any agreements entered into between us. For this purpose, we will store your personal data in our membership database for the purpose of providing you with member services. We may send you information by e-mail from time to time about on issues that may be of interest to you, updates, policy papers, submissions and events. You will always be provided with the opportunity to opt-out of receiving these communications; in an anonymised format for research, statistical analysis and behavioural analysis; and for diagnosing problems with the website and fraud prevention and detection. We retain your personal data in accordance with our Retention Policy.

Sensitive Information

Where we collect sensitive information for example in connection with Medical Council status or to facilitate event administration it is provided to us by you or on your behalf voluntarily. By giving us this information, you agree that we may use such information as set out in this Notice. 

Cookie Policy

Overview

Cookies are small pieces of information, stored in simple text files, placed on your computer or internet enabled device by a web site. Typically, it is used to ease navigation through the Website. Cookies can be read by the web site on your subsequent visits. In addition, the information stored in a cookie may relate to your browsing habits on the web page, or a unique identification number so that the web site can remember you on your return visit. By using our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. We may use cookies for the following purposes: Analytics and Tags – We use cookies to learn how you, and other users, use our services and how well they perform. This allows us to identify errors, learn how our services perform, and improve and develop our services over time. We use Google Analytics and Google Tags: This is a web analytics service provided by Google Inc. which uses cookies to show us how visitors found and explored our site, and how we can enhance their experience. It provides us with information about the behaviour of our visitors (e.g. how long they stayed on the site, the average number of pages viewed) and also tells us how many visitors we have had. The aggregated statistical data cover items such as total visits or page views, and referrers to our website. For further details on Google’s privacy policies see www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html. Website Optimisation – We use cookies to improve the operation and presentation of our website, they also help compatibility issues (e.g., to identify your browser type) and improve performance (e.g., quicker loading of content).

Functionality – These cookies remember choices you made to improve your experience on our website. Targeting or advertising cookies – These cookies collect information about your browsing habits on the website in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests.

Can you control how cookies work?

Yes. Users can set their browsers to accept or reject all, or certain, cookies. All recent versions of popular browsers give users a level of control over cookies. For more information on how to control cookies with your browser, please visit http://www.aboutcookies.org/default.aspx?page=1.

Alternatively you can modify your cookie settings, using the cookie settings button below

Changes to this Notice

We may change this Notice from time to time in order to reflect changes in the law and/or our privacy practices.  We will update the date at the bottom of the Notice accordingly. We encourage you to check this Notice online for changes.

December 2020

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