Privacy Notification | The Housing Agency

Introduction

This privacy notice provides you, the data subject, with information about the processing of your personal data by the Housing Agency. This privacy notice also contains links to all the specific privacy notices applicable to various schemes and websites controlled or administered by The Housing Agency.

Who are The Housing Agency

The Housing Agency is located at 53 Mount Street Upper, Dublin, Ireland, is a state agency that focuses on supporting local authorities, the Department of Housing and Local Government (DHLG) and the Approved Housing Bodies.

The Housing Agency is a non-departmental body under the aegis of the DHLG. Together the Housing Agency and DHLG work to ensure and support the delivery of ministerial policy objectives and mandate. The processing of personal data conducted by the Housing Agency is governed by EU data protection laws such as the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Irish Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). The Housing Agency is obligated to ensure your personal data is processed fairly and in a transparent manner.

How The Housing Agency processes your personal data

As a data controller, The Housing Agency is obligated to ascertain the means and purposes of processing your personal data in accordance with law. However, in certain instances such as the Pyrite Remediation Scheme, the Housing Agency is a data processor. Therefore, The Housing Agency has linked specific scheme related privacy notices for your convenience:

For a scheme specific understanding of how the Housing Agency processes your personal data we request you read the above mentioned privacy notices.

The Housing Agency is also a data controller for personal data you provide when you engage with us, for example, when you provide personal data through this website, when you contact us by email or phone to make enquiries, requests or complaints.

As a data controller the Housing Agency is obligated to comply with the following principles of data protection law while processing your personal data:

Personal data should be used lawfully, fairly and transparently
Personal data should be collected only for valid purposes that are clearly identified and should not be used in any way that is incompatible with the purposes identified
Personal data should be relevant to satisfy the only purposes identified
Personal data should be kept accurate and up to date
Personal data should only be retained for as long as is necessary for the purposes identified
Personal data must be kept secure

What is Personal Data

Personal data is any information about you that can either directly identify or has the potential to identify you. Examples of personal data processed when you engage with the Housing Agency may include:

Reason	Type of Data Processed
Personal Identity	Your name
Contact Details	Email address, home address, phone number
Information you offer about your personal circumstances	Where you make an enquiry, request or complaint, you may offer information about your living arrangements, family life etc.
To enable specific functionalities of the website	Location data
To identify cookie preferences	IP address

It is essential to note that:

The Housing Agency website does not explicitly collect any personal data (except the IP address of the device to remember cookie preferences and consent) about you apart from the personal data voluntarily provided as a part of a communication issued through the contact us functionality. Any information provided to us through this functionality is not made available to third parties and is only used for resolving the query/ request raised.
The Housing Agency will not request, sensitive, confidential or propriety data, through the contact us functionality and requests that you abstain from providing any such information/documents through this website.
Where you contact us by email or phone to make enquiries, requests or complaints, we request you limit any sensitive or confidential information to what is necessary. The Housing Agency may retain a log of our contact with you for a limited period of time and shall anonymise your personal data when it is no longer required.

Why will the Housing Agency process your personal data

The GDPR mandates data controllers such as the Housing Agency, identify a lawful basis to process personal data. The Housing Agency may rely on the following lawful basis:

For the purposes of performance of a contract executed with you

For the purposes of complying with a legal obligation
For the purposes of public interest or to discharge/ fulfil an obligation vested in the Housing Agency or by another Public Body
For the purposes of achieving our legitimate interests without overriding your rights and freedoms
For the purposes of protecting your vital interests
For purposes which you have consented to.

To gain a more granular level of understanding on how the Housing Agency may process your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer (contact information provided at the end of this notice) or consult the scheme specific privacy notices.

Who can view your information

The Housing Agency will only disclose information about you to third parties if the Housing Agency is legally obliged to do so. The Housing Agency may only share strictly necessary information about you to processors, controllers or other third parties for purposes identified in a contractual agreement and bound by the obligations prescribed by the GDPR and the DPA 2018.

The Housing Agency may transfer your personal information outside the European Economic Area (EEA). However, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information with additional safeguards in place, namely the use of the data transfer mechanisms outlined in the GDPR.

For specific information on how the Housing Agency is processing your personal data at a scheme level, please consult the scheme specific privacy notices.

Cookies

Cookies are little pieces of text stored by your browser on your computer at the request of our servers. These often enable a specific functionality or enhance your user experience of visiting our website. You are always free to decline our functional and other similarly natured cookies anytime you visit our website. Certain cookies classified as strictly necessary are installed on your device by visiting our website.

To learn more about cookies classification and to withdraw your consent to cookies please visit the Housing Agency’s cookie policy and consent management page. You may also manually delete cookie files from your computer at your discretion. However, please note that when you decline cookies, certain features of our website may be affected. If you have any questions or concerns on cookies, please contact our Data Protection Officer (contact information available at the end of this notice).

How will your data be kept secure

The Housing Agency uses a range of physical, electronic, and managerial measures to ensure that we keep your personal data secure, accurate and up to date. These measures include education and training to relevant staff to ensure they are aware of our data protection obligations when processing personal data, administrative and technical controls to restrict access to personal data to a need to know basis, technological security measures, including firewalls, encryption, and anti-virus software; and physical security measures, such as staff security passes to access our premises. However, the transmission of information via the Internet may not be completely secure, although we will do our best to protect your personal data.

What are your rights

As per the General Data Protection Regulations, a number of data subject rights apply. Data subject rights are not absolute. The Housing Agency will review each request on a case-by-case basis, and will endeavour to uphold your rights where possible. We have listed these rights below. You may also find out more about your data subject rights by visiting www.dataprotection.ie.

Your Rights	Explanation
The right to be informed	The Housing Agency is obliged to ensure that any communications regarding our data processing activities between ourselves and any data subjects is provided in a clear and transparent manner. This is provided by this Privacy Notice.
The right of access	You are entitled to request a copy of the personal data currently held on you as well as the following information about your data: The purpose of processing; The categories of personal data concerned; The recipients to whom the personal data has been disclosed; The retention/envisioned retention period for that personal data; The source of the personal data if it has been collected from a third-party.
The right to rectification	If you believe the personal data we hold on you is either inaccurate or incomplete, you may exercise this right to correct or complete this data. This right can be used with the right to restrict processing to ensure that any inaccurate or incomplete data is not processed until corrected.
The right to erasure (right to be forgotten)	You may request erasure of any personal data we hold on you without undue delay where one of the following grounds apply: The personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes they were collected or otherwise processed; The data subject withdraws consent and no other legal ground for processing exists; The data subject exercises the right to object and no overriding legitimate grounds for processing exist; The personal data has been unlawfully processed; The personal data has to be erased for compliance with an overriding legal obligation; The personal data has been collected in relation to the offer of information society services.
The right to restrict processing	As an alternative to the right to erasure, you may ask us to cease processing your data, but not erase it entirely where one of the following grounds apply: The accuracy of the personal data is contested; Processing of the personal data is unlawful; Personal data is no longer needed for processing, but is still required as part of a legal process; The right to object has been successfully exercised and processing is temporarily halted pending a decision on the status of the processing.
The right to data portability	You may request your personal data be transferred to another controller or processor in a commonly used, machine-readable format. This right can only be exercised when all of the following grounds apply: The processing was on the basis of consent; or The processing was on the basis of a contract or in furtherance of executing a contract;
The right to object	You may exercise the right to object in instances where: Processing is based on either the performance of a public task or legitimate interest; Processing is for direct marketing purposes; Processing is for the purposes of scientific or historical research; or Processing involves automated decision-making, including profiling. Any data subject request will be responded to within one month, however we reserve the right to refuse or charge an administrative fee for the furthering of any of the above requests if they are done so in a frivolous, vexatious or excessive manner. We will inform you if an administrative charge is being applied before fulfilling your request, so you can decide whether to proceed.

If you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us. We will seek to deal with your request without undue delay, and in any event within one month (subject to any extensions to which we are lawfully entitled).

The Housing Agency is also entitled to assess whether the request to exercise any of the rights listed above is frivolous, vexatious or excessive. In such an event, the Housing Agency may inform you of an administrative charge to fulfil your request.

How long will your personal data be stored

The Housing Agency will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which the data was collected for. This period will also include and in certain instances be informed by legislations that create a legal obligation for the Housing Agency to retain your personal data for regulatory purposes. To gain specific information about the retention periods applicable to your personal data contact our Data Protection Officer.

In certain circumstances the Housing Agency may anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you. Once the anonymised data ceases to be relevant for the processing activity, the Housing Agency may destroy your personal data securely in accordance with applicable laws.

Social Media Notice

When you use the Housing Agency’s social media channels to communicate with us, such as through comments, tweets, or sharing posts, such communications are public. Your posts and comments may also show up in search-engine results.

You should only communicate information that you are happy to have published in the public domain through social media channels. It is not advisable to include personal data or sensitive information in any content you post on our social media accounts.

Posts and/or content on Housing Agency’s social media channels may contain external links to other sites. The Housing Agency does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of information on other web sites. Links to particular items are not intended as endorsements of any views expressed, products or services offered on outside sites, or the organisations sponsoring those sites.

Each social media channel has their own policy on the way they process your personal data when you access their sites. Social media channels offer a suite of tools to tailor your interactions and information shared. These tools are typically contained within “Settings” or “Account Settings”. For example, if you choose to watch a YouTube video, you will be asked to accept YouTube cookies; if you look at our activity on X, you will be asked to accept X’s cookies; and the same applies for our presence on LinkedIn.

If you have any concerns or questions about their use of your personal data, please carefully read their privacy policies before using them. The use of social media channels by the Housing Agency does not in any way imply an endorsement of X, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Instagram and/or their privacy policies.

The Housing Agency may process your personal data such as your profile name, and the information you choose to make public through your interaction with our social media channel. The Housing Agency may also receive anonymised engagement metrics from the platform.

The ideas and views expressed by the Housing Agency on social media, are for information purposes only. No communication, share, like, retweet, a follow, or a blog made/ published through social media shall be deemed to constitute legal or official notice on behalf of the Housing Agency. More information on the Housing Agency’s Social Media Policy can be found here Social Media Policy | The Housing Agency

Data Protection Officer

The Housing Agency has duly appointed Trilateral Research Limited as the Data Protection Officer (DPO). Should you need to contact the Housing Agency DPO directly, you can do so either by email or phone. Email: dpo@housingagency.ie Tel: +353 01 657 1978

This notice is kept under regular review and is therefore subject to change. Last Updated: 29/12/2023.