Water Services Privacy Policy

WATER SERVICES - PRIVACY STATEMENT

Kilkenny County Council - Water Services Supports privacy notice

In order to provide the most effective and targeted range of water services to meet the needs of the citizens of County Kilkenny we will be required to collect, process and use certain types of information about people in connection with water services. Depending on the water service being requested the information sought may include 'personal data' as defined by the Data Protection Acts and by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and may relate to the personal circumstances of you (as applicant) and members of your family who may also be part of your application

Why do we have this privacy notice?

Kilkenny Water Services have created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy and to assure you that in all your dealings with Kilkenny Water Services that we will ensure the security of the personal data you provide to us.
Kilkenny Water Services creates, collects and processes a vast amount of personal data in various multiple formats on a daily basis. Kilkenny County Council's commitment to you is that the personal data you may be required to supply to us is;
- Obtained lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner
- Obtained for only specified, explicit and legitimate purposes
- Adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for purpose for which it was obtained
- Recorded, stored accurately and securely and where necessary kept up to date
- Kept only for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was obtained.
- Kept in a form which permits identification of the data subject
- Processed only in a manner that ensures the appropriate security of the personal data including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing.

Legal basis for the collection, processing and sharing of personal data as part of Water Services
Kilkenny Water Services may, for the purpose of its functions under the Water Services Acts request all of the information contained in any Water Services application form which has been devised by the Department of Housing, Planning & Local Government for use by all local authorities and by Kilkenny County Council.
Types of Personal data required
In advance of completing a water services application form you should read the information leaflet which accompanies the form carefully. You should take care to answer all of the questions fully where these are relevant to you and provide the required supporting documentation. Failing to provide a detailed answer to the questions relevant to you or provide the required supporting documentation may result in your application being considered incomplete and delay your application.
All applicants are required to provide information on the following categories of data (where they are applicable)
- Personal details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
- Marital details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
- Weekly income details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
- Details of any other household members seeking accommodation
How your personal data will be used/processed by the Water Services within Kilkenny County Council
Phone numbers and email addresses
When contacting us we may ask you for a contact mobile phone number (or email). If we do, we may use this number to contact you by text (or email) as well as by phone. We will only contact you about matters that affect your application for any water service, such as well grants or subsidy grants. No texts (or emails) will contain any information that could be used to identify you i.e. your name, so that if your phone is lost/stolen the messages could only be matched to the mobile phone the text was sent to.
Electronic storage and processing of your data
The volume of customers Water Services serves requires an IT system to manage customer applications. Data from these applications is added to the RWMIS IT System The information requested on the forms and stored in these system is relevant to an assessment of your eligibility for a relevant water services application, Access to the data is controlled and restricted to relevant staff involved in assessing and processing the various services with other security measures such as passwords.
If you decide to discontinue an application, we will store your application history electronically so that we can more effectively deal with any application in the future. Water Services implements the National Retention Policy. This will apply to all paper records.

Sharing of your Personal Data

The data you supply to Kilkenny Water services as part of your application for grants etc will be used by Kilkenny Water Services for the purposes of determining whether you qualify for the said grants. However, some of your personal data (see list below) may be shared with other service departments within Kilkenny County Council so that you are not being asked to supply the same personal data multiple times i.e.
- Name
- Address and contact details
- PPSN
This personal data will be shared with the service departments such as;
Finance Section
Technicians
Kilkenny Water Services will also share your data with the Department of Housing, Planning & Local Government
If you do not wish that the personal data identified above that you supplied as part of your application, you should indicate this to Water Services Department in Kilkenny County Council in writing when you are making your application. You can also inform the other sections listed above that you do not wish your personal information from your application to be used in your application for their services and you wish to supply a fresh complete set of personal data. If such a request is received, water services department may not be in a position to process your application.
Records Retention Policy
Kilkenny Water Services has adopted the National Retention Policy which gives more detail of the time period for which your personal data will be retained by Kilkenny Water Services and what will happen to it after the required retention period has expired.
A copy of Record Retention Policy can be accessed via the following link,
https://www.kilkennycoco.ie/eng/Your_Council/Data-Protection/National-Retention-Policy.pdf
Your Rights
You have the right to request access to personal data held about you, obtain confirmation as to whether data concerning you exists, be informed of the content and source of data and check its accuracy. In addition, if the data held by us is found to be inaccurate you have the right to change, remove, block, or object to the use of personal data held by Kilkenny Water Services. In certain circumstances blocking access to data may remove access to a service where the data is required by law or for essential purposes related to delivery of a service to you. Please note that to help protect your privacy, we take steps to verify your identity before granting access to personal data. To exercise these rights use you should take the following steps,
https://www.kilkennycoco.ie/eng/Your_Council/Data-Protection/Datta-Protection-Access-Request-Form.docx
Right of Compliant to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the response you received from KILKENNY County Council in relation to your request, then you are entitled to make a complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner who may investigate the matter for you.
 

The Data Protection Commissioner's website is www.dataprotection.ie or you can contact their Office at:
Lo Call Number: 1890 252 231
E-mail: info@dataprotection.ie
Postal Address: Data Protection Commissioner
Canal House
Station Road
Portarlington, Co. Laois. R32 AP23.