Privacy

This statement relates to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's privacy practices in connection with its websites. The Department is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of any other websites.

Collection and Use of Technical Data

Apart from the registration of customers, the Department does not collect any personal data about you on its websites. Any personal information that you volunteer to the Department (for example by registering for electronic services provided by the Department) will be treated with the highest standards of security and confidentiality, strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 1988, as amended by the Data Protection (Amendment) Act, 2003. Any information that you provide in this way is used by the Department only in line with the purpose for which you provided it and as governed by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.

Collection and Use of Personal Information

Technical details in connection with visits to the Department's websites are logged for statistical and other administrative purposes. No information is collected that could be used by the Department to identify website visitors. The details logged are confined to the following items:

• The IP address of the visitor's web client
• The top-level domain name used (for example .ie, .com, .org, .net)
• 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 and documents downloaded)
• The type of web browser used by the website visitor.

The Department will make no attempt to identify individual visitors, or to associate the technical details listed above with any individual except in the investigation of any inappropriate or malicious use of the Department's website itself. It is the policy of the Department never to disclose any technical information in respect of individual website visitors to any third party, unless legally obliged to make such disclosure.

Use of Cookies on our website

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's website uses Google Analytics to help analyse how users use the site. This analytical tool uses 'cookies', which are text files placed on your computer, to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) is transmitted to Google. This information is then used to evaluate visitors use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity for the Department.

The Department will not (and will not allow any third party) to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to our site. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any source as part of our use of the Google statistical analytics tool. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither the Department nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user.

The Department will also use a simple cookie to record that a site visitor has acknowledged the use of cookies on this site. This is to prevent the visitor being shown the pop up advisement each time they visit the site but will not collect or store any other information about the visitor.

It is possible to disable the use of cookies in your browser. However, this can affect your browsing experience and some services on this site and others may not function properly, or at all. The procedure for disabling cookies depends on your browser. We have supplied links to several of the more popular browsers for procedures on how to view and disable cookies.

Google Chrome Browser
Microsoft Internet Explorer Browser
Mozilla Firefox Browser
Apple Safari Browser
Opera Web Browser