Data protection notice

We are the Patient Advocacy Service. The Patient Advocacy Service is provided by the National Advocacy Service for People with Disabilities who have a registered address of Level 3 Rear Unit, Marshalsea Court, Merchant’s Quay, Dublin 8. The Patient Advocacy Service is funded by the Department of Health.

We provide a free, independent, patient advocacy service. This notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or from others, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. For the purpose of the Data Protection Acts 1988 to 2018 (as amended) and from 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) (the Acts), the data controller is the National Advocacy Service for People with Disabilities CLG. Our data protection contact is Deirdre Burke: deirdre.burke@patientadvocacyservice.ie.

We may collect a range of personal information from you, depending on your circumstances and the services you require. You may give us personal data by:

• Corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. We ask you to disclose only as much information as is necessary to provide you with our services or to submit a question, suggestion or comment in relation to our services. 
• Attending meetings with us. These meetings might include the provision of personal data by you, or the filling in of forms required for us to provide a service to you.
• By attending at an office where CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) is in operation. 

When you use our services, we may obtain, with your authorisation, the following categories of personal data from others: 

• Records relating to your situation, for example, your file from a Public Acute Hospital or Nursing Home.

The records that we may obtain will vary depending on your circumstances and the third parties involved. In obtaining this information, we may use a variety of processes such as data subject access requests, Freedom of Information requests and a copy of your authorisation for us to access this information. 

We collect the information in order to provide you with our services.

 We may use this information: 

• To contact you to arrange appointments.
• To provide information and support you to understand your options.  
• To assess your circumstances and to explore potential courses of action with you. 
• To provide an advocacy service by engaging with third parties in relation to your situation, including public and private organisations. 
• To assist you to fill in forms relating to public and social services. 
• To assist you in any steps involved in making a complaint under Your Service Your Say, relevant complaints process or in the aftermath of a Patient Safety Incident. 

To keep you informed in relation to your advocacy case. 

• To conduct statistical analysis and reporting, for training purposes, for quality review purposes and for social policy purposes.

• That you have provided consent for the processing for the provision of our services. 
• Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us as the controller.
• Processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject. From time to time, we may also collect sensitive or ‘special category’ data in the provision of our services. The legal basis for the processing of your special category data is:
• That you have provided consent for the processing for the provision of our services.

We may share your personal data with the Health Service Executive, public acute hospitals and nursing homes in order to provide you with our services. We attach at Schedule 1 a list of entities and categories of entities with which your personal data may be shared. In addition, we may disclose your personal information to third parties in the following exceptional circumstances: 

• If there is a risk of serious harm to you or to another person or to property

• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your information in order to comply with any legal obligation. 

The time periods for which we retain your information depends on the type of information and the purposes for which we use it. We will keep your information for no longer than is required or permitted. 

• Where we have provided you with information and advice or once-off advocacy we will retain your information for two years; 
• Where we have completed an advocacy case for you, we will retain your information for six years. 

 No. 

You have the following rights: 

• The right to access the personal data we hold about you. 
• The right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data about you without undue delay.  
• The right to have us erase any personal data we hold about you in circumstances such as where it is no longer necessary for us to hold the personal data or, in some circumstances, if you have withdrawn your consent to the processing. 
• The right to object to us processing personal data about you such as processing for profiling or direct marketing. 
• The right to ask us to provide your personal data to you in a portable format or, where technically feasible, for us to port that personal data to another provider provided it does not result in a disclosure of personal data relating to other people. 
• The right to request a restriction of the processing of your personal data.  Where our processing of your personal data is based on your consent to that processing, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time but any processing that we have carried out before you withdrew your consent remains lawful.

You may exercise any of the above rights by our data protection contact at any of the contact points listed above. You may lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority with respect to our processing of your personal data. The supervisory authority in Ireland is the Data Protection Commissioner. The website is www.dataprotection.ie.  

This notice may change from time to time, and any changes will be posted on the www.patientadvocacyservice.ie website and will be effective when posted.  This notice was last updated on 8th October 2019. 

Our data protection contact can be contacted at any of the contact points listed above.