Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism have created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy. By visiting discoverboynevalley.ie, or any subsites of the above you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Notice.
This statement relates to our privacy practices in connection with the aforementioned websites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other websites. Some technical terms used in this statement are explained at the end of this page.
General Statement
Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism fully respect your right to privacy, and we will not collect any personal information about you on this website without your clear permission. Any information which you volunteer to discoverboynevalley.ie will be treated with the highest standard of security and confidentiality, strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003.
What Personal Information About Customers Does discoverboynevalley.ie Gather?
The information we learn from customers helps us personalise and continually improve your online experience at discoverboynevalley.ie and our other websites. Here are the types of information we gather:
Information You Give Us:
We receive and store any information you enter on our website or give us in any other way. You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. When you register for newsletters etc., we require personal information (like name, email address, etc.). We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customising our online services for you, improving our online services, and communicating with you.
Where a user voluntarily provides personal information, the data will be used for analysis, research or customer service purposes only. Any personal data provided by you to us will be held in accordance with the data protection principles set out in the Data Protection (Amendment) Act, 2003, the Data Protection Act, 1988, Electronic Commerce Act, 2000, and other relevant EU and Irish legislation.
If you register on our site you may be given an option to add yourself to one of our mailing lists which will send you periodic details about the selected service. We will always have a clear mechanism for you to remove yourself from these mailing lists.
Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism assure you that the identity of all who contact us through this website is kept confidential: we do not rent, sell, or exchange mailing lists, or otherwise disclose such information to 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.
Automatic Information:
For general web browsing no personal information is revealed to us, although certain statistical information is available to us from our website logs. For example, like many websites, we obtain certain types of information when your web browser (browsers are pieces of software that allow you to access the internet; examples include: Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, etc.) accesses Meath.ie or our other websites. See below for examples. Also, to ensure the security of your online account information in our ePayments area, we use cookies to ensure that security is maintained by preventing the “hijacking” of your online identity (see below for more on cookies). The only information that is stored in that cookie is a key code which can be used by our server only during the current visit to verify your identity online. The cookie becomes unusable after either the user logs out or after 20 minutes of inactivity on our website.
Examples of information collected:
• Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet (for example 192.168.11.47)
• Login—if using our account services
• 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
Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism will make no attempt to identify individual visitors or to associate the technical details listed above with any individual, except in cases where criminal activity has taken place (i.e. in response to a "hacking" incident). It is the policy of discoverboynevalley.ie never to disclose such technical information in respect of individual website visitors to a third party (except for law-enforcement bodies and then only in response to illegal activity such as "hacking"; also our Internet Service Provider which records such data on our 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 Meath County Council, and only for statistical and other administrative purposes. You should note that technical details, which we cannot associate with any identifiable individual, do not constitute "personal data" for the purposes of the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that a website can store on your computer to help keep track of different things, like if you want to stay logged into a website, or your preferences within a website.
We use cookies on our website to:
- allow certain functionality to work i.e. search facilties - to allow search selections to be maintained for the duration of your search.
- anonymously track activity on our website via Google Analytics. This information is used to to keep our site relevant and make it easier to use.
- provide security while you access your online payment account information.
The "Help" portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. However, cookies allow you to take full advantage of some of discoverboynevalley.ie’s account-based features, and we recommend that you leave them turned on.
You can find more information about cookies on the following wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
Log Files and Statistics
We use IP addresses, URI's of requested resources, timestamps and HTTP user-agents to analyse trends, administer the system and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. In addition to this we use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc ("Google"). Google Analytics uses cookies, to help analyse how visitors use our site. The information generated by the cookie about the use of our website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and Internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your Web browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to make full use of our website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.
Does discoverboynevalley.ie Share the Information it Receives?
Rarely. In cases where there is a statutory requirement to share information with a government agency or other local authority or where your information must be shared with another agency in order to answer a customer query, then the minimum amount of information required will be shared in an appropriate manner. Generally, information is shared with other agencies as an aggregate rather than as a specific piece of data.
We may choose to release automatic information (see above) and other information received to the website to companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction. Information of this type will only be shared about users who have caused or attempted to cause damage to discoverboynevalley.ie. This type of information would be shared only as a result of “hacking” attacks, fraud or other illegal activities.
What Information Can I Access Online?
Discoverboynevalley.ie and will make as much public information available online as possible in order to improve the transparency of our organization.
Links To Other Websites
In order to make more information easier to find for our users, discoverboynevalley.ie links to content owned and hosted by other organisations, etc. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other websites. We link to other websites that provide information relevant for visitors to the Boyne Valley and to websites whose content we think would be of interest or assistance to those planning a visit to the Boyne Valley. Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism makes no promises or recommendations about the quality of services provided by groups owning the websites we link to.
Glossary of Technical Terms Used
Web Browser: the piece of software you use to read web pages. Examples are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Opera.
IP Address: the identifying details for your computer (or your internet company’s computer), expressed in "internet protocol" code (for example 192.168.55.124). Every computer connected to the web has a unique IP address, although the address may not be the same every time a connection is made.
Cookies: See above.
Disclaimer
Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism, its Councillors, directors, employees, servants and agents, affiliates or other representatives and their respective parent and subsidiary companies, shall not be liable in respect of any claims, emergencies, demands, causes of action, damages, losses, expenses, including without limitation, reasonable legal fees and costs of proceedings arising out of or in connection with the use and/or dissemination of personal information relating to you in accordance with this privacy policy and your consents.
You should be aware that where you link to another website from the discoverboynevalley.ie website, that Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism have no control over that other website. Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism have no responsibility for the privacy practices of other websites.
Amendments
Meath County Council, Louth County Council and Boyne Valley Tourism reserves the right in its sole discretion to amend this privacy statement at any time, and you should regularly check this privacy statement for any amendments.
Accessing Your Personal Information
Under Section 4 of the Data Protection Acts, 1988 and 2003, you are entitled to a copy of any personal information held about you by Meath Local Authorities and Louth Local Authorities. You can apply for a copy of your personal data by writing to the Data Protection Officer, Meath County Council, Buvinda House, Dublin Road, Navan, Co. Meath or Freedom of Information Unit, Corporate Services, Louth County Council, County Hall, Millennium Centre, Dundalk, Co. Louth enclosing a cheque or postal order for €6.35.
Your written request should include “I am making this request under section 4 of the Data Protection Acts.”
You should also include any additional details that may be necessary to enable the authority to locate your record; e.g. customer account number, reference number.
All valid requests will be dealt with, within 40 days.
Further information in regard to data privacy rights is available on the website of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner – www.dataprivacy.ie.
More Information/Contact
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of discoverboynevalley.ie website or your dealings with this or another Boyne Valley Tourism website, you can contact us- see details on the Contact page.