PRIVACY POLICY

At Gaisce we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy helps to explain when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, how we keep it safe and secure and your rights and choices in relation to your information.

Who are we?

Gaisce or ‘great achievement’ is a self-development programme for young people between the ages of 15-25 and has been in existence since 1985. The Awards initially flourished under the patronage of former President Patrick. J Hillary. To date over 300,000 young people have participated in the Gaisce programme. At Gaisce our main aim is to ensure we have a programme which fits the needs of every young person who wishes to participate in the Gaisce programme and to give each participant the best possible opportunity to do so. We believe in the ability and resilience of young people and through the Gaisce programme we want them to nurture that ability and to realise their full potential.

Gaisce is a registered charity (CHY 8482) and relies on funding to deliver its programme. Registered address is Ratra House, North Road, Phoenix Park, Dublin 8.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you in the following ways:

Information you give us directly

For example, we may obtain information about you when you sign up to take part in Gaisce:

• When you sign up to become a President’s Award Leader (PAL) or volunteer.
• When you take part in one of our events.
• When you become a Challenge Partner or Gaisce Award Partner (GAP).
• When you take part in a survey.

Information you give us indirectly

Advertising networks, analytics providers and search information providers.

You should check any privacy policy provided to you where you give your data to a third party.

When you visit this website

We, like other companies, automatically collect the following information:

• Technical information, including the type of device you’re using, the IP address, browsing and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve the services we offer.
• Information about your visits to this website, for example we collect information about pages you visit and how you navigate the website, i.e. lengths of visits to certain pages, services you viewed and referral sources (how you arrived at our site).

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website – more information on cookies can be found under our ‘Cookies Policy’ on this site.

Social Media

When you interact with us on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter we may obtain information about you (for example, when you tag us in an event photo). The information we receive will depend on the privacy preferences you have set on those types of platforms.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect and store and use may include:

• Your name and contact details (including postal address, email and contact number).
• Your date of birth.
• Information about your activities on our website and about the device used to access it, for instance your IP address and geographical location.
• Any other personal information shared with us.

Data protection laws recognise certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring greater protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and religion.

We do not usually collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to, for example, we may ask for your health information when signing up to a particular challenge (For example, The Defence Forces Adventure Challenge).

Where appropriate, we will make why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for clear.

How and why is your information used?

We may use your information for a number of different purposes, which may include:

• Providing you with the services, updates or information you asked for.
• Carrying out our obligations under any contracts entered into between you and us;
• Keeping a record of your relationship with us.
• Conducting analysis and market research so we can understand how we can improve our service, events or information.
• Checking for updated contact details against third party sources so we can stay in touch if you move.
• Dealing with entries into a competition.
• Seeking your views or comments on the service we provide.
• Notifying you of changes to our service.
• Sending you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you.

How long is your information kept for?

We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for, the length of time we retain your personal information for is determined by operational and legal considerations. For example, we are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory and regulatory obligations (e.g. health/safety and tax/accounting purposes).

We review our retention periods on a regular basis.

Who has access to your information?

We do not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Lawful processing

Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We consider the following grounds to be relevant:

Specific Consent

Where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you emails, texts and/or telephone calls.

Performance of a contract

Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it. 

Legal obligation

Where necessary, so that we can comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject, for example where we are ordered by a court or regulatory authority like the Charity Regulator.

Vital interests

Where it is necessary to protect life or health (for example in the case of medical emergency suffered by an individual at one of our events) or a safeguarding issue which requires us to share your information with the emergency services.

Legitimate interests

Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as what the information is used for is fair and does not duly impact your rights).

We consider our legitimate interests to be running Gaisce -The President’s Award as a charitable organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example to:

• Send Emails or postal communications which we think will be of interest to you;
• Conduct research to better understand who our participants are;
• Monitor who we deal with to protect the organisation against fraud, money laundering and other risks;
• Enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our service /communications for the benefit of our participants, PALs, Challenge Partners and
• Understand better how people interact with our website.

When we legitimately process your personal information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

When we use sensitive personal information, we require an additional legal basis to do so under data protection laws, so will do so on the basis of your explicit consent.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct communications from us about the Gaisce programme then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form used to collect your information.

We’re committed to putting you in control of your data and therefore you are free to change your communication preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes) at any time by contacting us by email: info@gaisce.ie, telephone: 01 617 1999 or post: Gaisce – The President’s Award, Ratra House, North Road, Phoenix Park, Dublin 8.

We will not use your personal information for communication purposes if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted and will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes like where we are processing an application or thanking you for your participation in an event.

Your Rights

Under Irish Data Protection law, you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights that apply:

Right of access

You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless legal exceptions apply.

If you want to access your information, please complete a Subject Access Request (SAR) form. This form must be completed in full and sent with proof of your identity to: Gaisce – The President’s Award, Ratra House, North Road, Phoenix Park, Dublin 8 marked for the attention of Gaisce Data Protection Officer.

> [Link to SAR form] <

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us and we are working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us via email or post (see below). Alternatively, you can telephone 01 617 1999.

Right to restrict use

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy or we are not lawfully allowed to use it.

Right of erasure

You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions. We will do so as far as we are required to (there are some exceptions to this rule).

We are required under GDPR regulation to carry out your request ‘without undue delay’ or at most within a month of your request.

Circumstances under which we may refuse:

• To exercise the right of freedom of expression and information.
• To comply with a legal obligation for the performance of a public interest task or exercise of official authority (for instance, if required to by the Revenue Commissioners).
• For public health purposes or when it is in the public interest.
• For archiving purposes which are in the public interest, such as scientific research, historical research or statistical purposes.
• When the data is necessary for the exercise or defence of legal claims.

Under GDPR regulation the burden of proof for retaining information/data lies with the organisation and not the individual and the organisation must prove legitimate grounds for refusal to meet the individuals request and communicate their refusal effectively.

Right for your personal information to be portable

If we are processing your personal information (1) based on your consent, or in order to enter into or carry out a contract with you, and (2) the processing is being done by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you or another service provider in a machine-readable format.

Right to object

You have the right to object to processing where we are using your personal information (1) based on legitimate interests, (2) for direct communications or (3) for statistical/research purposes.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email us at info@gaisce.ie or write to The Data Protection Officer, Gaisce, The President’s Award, Ratra House, North Road, Phoenix Park, Dublin 8. We may be required to ask for further information and/or evidence of identity. We will endeavour to respond fully to all requests within one month of receipt of your request, however if we are unable to do so we will contact you with reasons for the delay.

Keeping your information safe

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational controls are in place to protect it.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, this website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. This helps us to deliver a better more personalised service when you browse our website.

It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to switch off cookies on your computer check our ‘cookies’ policy on this site.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you access those using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third party site.

16 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please seek your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes we’ll make this clear on this website.

Review of this Policy

We keep this policy under regular review. This policy was last updated on June 20^th, 2018.