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Data Privacy Notice

Information applicable to all Department of Foreign Affairs customers.

The Department necessarily collects, processes, and stores significant volumes of personal data from our customers, staff, and service providers. In particular, the effective delivery of passport and consular services for Irish citizens at home and abroad is a central component of the Department's work and necessitates the processing of personal data.

The current legislation for Data Protection in Ireland is the Data Protection Acts 1988 - 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR). In accordance with the GDPR as given further effect in Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018, the Department is a ‘Data Controller’ and, as such, has significant responsibilities for ensuring the rights of data subjects and the protection of personal data processed. GDPR defines personal data as ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (data subject)’.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is fully committed to keeping all personal data submitted by its customers, safe and secure during administrative processes.  All necessary technical measures have been put in place to ensure the safety and security of the systems, which hold this data.

Transparency and openness in the use of personal data held is important to the Department and therefore we aim to fully inform all our customers about the purpose(s) for which their data will be used and why, where it may be shared and why, and how long the Department may hold their data. 

The Data Protection Officer for the Department is Kieran Houlihan. If you have a query, concern or complaint regarding a data protection matter, the most effective and efficient way to contact the Department's Data Protection Team is by emailing data.protection@dfa.ie.

Alternatively, if you are not in a position to engage with this office via email, the Data Protection Team can be contacted as follows:

Data Protection Officer,
Department of Foreign Affairs,
76-78 Harcourt Street,
Dublin 2,
D02 DX45,
Ireland.

Rights of the individual in relation to personal data held by the Department:

When you, as a customer, provide personal data to the Department you have certain rights available to you in relation to that data.  These rights are outlined below and can be exercised by contacting the Data Protection Officer, indicating which right(s) you wish to exercise: 

  • right to be informed and the right of access;
  • right to rectification;
  • right to erasure;
  • right to restrict processing;
  • right to data portability;
  • right to object to processing;
  • rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

The easiest way to make a request to this Department in relation to your personal data, including a Data Subject Access Request, is by emailing data.protection@dfa.ie

More detailed information on your rights under the GDPR is available from the Data Protection Commission.

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Data Protection Commission if you consider that processing of your personal data is contrary to the GDPR.

Complaints to the Commission should be made in writing and addressed to:

info@dataprotection.ie

or

The Data Protection Commission,

21 Fitzwilliam Square South,

Dublin 2,

D02 RD28,

Ireland.

The Data Protection Commission also operates a helpdesk function, which is contactable at 0761 104 800 or LoCall 1890 252231.

Data Protection Notice PDF