Data Privacy Notice

Community Law and Mediation

Community Law & Mediation (CLM) is an Independent Law Centre, as regulated by the Law Society of Ireland, a company limited by guarantee (Company Reg. No. 69771) and a charity recognised by the Revenue Commissioners (CHY No. CHY6359).

Contact us on dataprotection@communitylawandmediation.ie or by phone at 01 8477804 if you have any questions about privacy or security.

CLM is a data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Acts 1988-2018 and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

What is a Data Privacy Notice?

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.

Changes to our Data Protection Notice

This notice may change from time to time, and any changes will be posted on the www.communitylawandmediation.ie website and will be effective when posted.

This notice was last updated on 6th April 2020.

Automated Decision making and profiling

We do not use any personal data for the purpose of automated decision-making or profiling.

Do we transfer your information outside the European Union or European Economic Area?

Some of our websites use services provided by Google, including Google Custom Search, Google Maps and Google Analytics. Google may store some information on servers outside of the European Union or European Economic Area.

Google is certified under Privacy Shield.

Please see our Website Data Protection and Privacy Statement for information as to how we collect, store and use personal information submitted to us while visiting the CLM site.

What type of information do we collect?

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 in a variety of ways, including but not limited to:

Visiting our website.
Making a donation to CLM.
Accessing our legal or mediation services.
Signing up to receive our newsletters.
Signing up to our membership programme.
Participating in CLM research and policy reform.
Contacting us using a social media channel. If you wish to contact us using social media, please consult the privacy policy of the social media service provider for details on their privacy practices.
Communicating with us by phone, email, at our clinics or otherwise. We ask you to disclose only as much information as is necessary. We do not record the audio of telephone calls, but may have a log of when you called, call length, to whom you spoke, and what the subject of that call was.
Making a complaint about our services.
Applying to work with us as a volunteer, employee or contractor or to act in an advisory capacity to us. The type of information you may provide includes an application form for the job we advertised, your CV, a cover letter, your name, address, e-mail address and phone number. We ask that you do not disclose sensitive personal information in your application
You or your organisation attends or enquires about our training and other events.

What information about you do we obtain from others?

We may receive and process information in the course of our legal and mediation case work from legal professionals, public bodies and private organisations. In these circumstances, you will have provided your consent to the professionals or organisations that your data may be used in this way.

For third party individuals, we may receive personal data directly from a service user, in the course of our legitimate purposes e.g. in order to facilitate a mediation. Any personal data received from a third party is used only for the purpose for which it was provided.

Why do we collect this information?

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

We may use this information:

For people who view and interact with our website, we use this information to respond to your query when sent through our “contact us” form and to sign up to our newsletter when you request subscription through our website. We always include an unsubscribe button in our communications, so you can opt out of receiving such communications at any time. We share information such as your name and email address with our newsletter services provider who sends out our newsletters.
For our service users (legal, mediation and community education), we use this information to provide you with information, to advise and / provide an advocacy service to you, to provide you with our services and/or to examine a complaint made to us in relation to our services.
For volunteers for our mediation and legal services, we process data in order to liaise with you about our client matters.
For job and volunteer applicants, we process data to recruit for new roles and to ascertain your suitability for a specific role.
For our members, we use this information to provide you with information on our services including upcoming CLM events, and to administer our membership services.
We may use data to conduct statistical analysis and reporting, for training purposes, for quality review purposes and for social policy purposes

The legal bases for the processing of your data are:

That you have provided consent for the processing for the provision of our services .e.g. when you subscribe to our newsletter online.
That processing is necessary for the performance of a contract which you have entered into with us or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract.
That processing is our legitimate interest in the administration and operation of our legal, mediation and community education services and our law reform work.
That 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 consented to the processing of this data.

Who do we share this information with?

We may share your personal data with public and private organisations in order to provide you with our services. For instance, we may share your data with our practice management system provider, our email service provider and/or remote conferencing service e.g. Zoom. When you engage with our legal service, we may also share your personal data with a volunteer solicitor or barrister so that they can provide legal advice. For our mediation services, we share your information with our volunteer mediators in order to arrange the mediation.

We have included 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:

If there is a risk of serious harm to you, to another person or to property.
If we are under a duty to disclose or to share your information in order to comply with any legal obligation.
If we are required to give evidence in court.
To get legal advice or to defend a legal right.
In the event of a disclosure relating to child abuse.

How long do we keep your personal data?

The length of time we will 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.

In general, CLM retains its legal files for seven and a half years from the date of closing. Where the legal matter relates to a person under 18 years of age, the legal file is retain for seven and half years from the date that the client turns 18 before being securely destroyed.

For mediation and legal services, we will retain your name, address and the nature of your query in perpetuity in order to prevent a conflict of interest arising.

What are your rights?

You have the following rights under the GDPR, in certain circumstances and subject to certain exemptions, in relation to your personal data:

The right to access the personal data that we hold about you.
The right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data about you or if we have incomplete information you may request that we update the information such that it is complete.
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. The withdrawal of your consent may mean the suspension or cessation of the provision of the services that we have been providing you up until the date of withdrawal of consent on the basis that we are no longer able to provide these services without your personal data.

How do you exercise your rights?

You may exercise any of the above rights by contacting CLM 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.

Schedule 1

We have set out below a list of third parties with whom we may share your data.

ICT providers

Where ICT services such as network facilities, website hosting, hardware, software, email, network storage, case management systems, analytics services, search services, digital maps services, remote conferencing services e.g. Zoom or similar are provided by or maintained by a third party.

Auditors, Accounting Software, Payment Service Providers, Insurance Brokers, Financial Institutions, Revenue Commissions, the Charities Regulator, the Company Registration Office and the Standards in Public Office Commission (Regulation of Lobbying).

Where we require these services to manager our business operations and to comply with our legal obligations.

Shredding companies

Where our files are securely destroyed by a third party.

External Legal Counsel, Advisors and Mediators

Where necessary to provide you with legal and mediation services.