General

The Department of Finance fully respects your right to privacy and will not collect any personal information about you on this website without your clear permission. Any personal information which you volunteer will be treated with the highest standards of security and confidentiality, strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003.

Any information you provide in an e-mail message to one of the addresses listed throughout our site, it is not shared with outside parties and is used only in line with the purpose for which you provide it.

For general web browsing personal information is not revealed to us, nor are details of individual transactions, though certain statistical and technical information is available to us via our internet service provider, information that is logged by standard web servers on the internet.

Technical

The technical details logged are confined to the following items:
•    The IP address from which you access our website (an IP address is the number automatically assigned to your computer when you are surfing the web. IP addresses are used to analyse trends, administer the site, track users' movements, and gather statistical information and are not linked to personally identifiable information);
•    The type of browser and operating system used to access our site (for example, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Windows, Linux);
•    The date and time of visits to our site;
•    The pages visited;
•    The internet address of the website from which you accessed our site, including any search terms used.
•    This website uses cookies which enable a visitor’s web browser to remember which pages on this website have already been visited.

We use this information to help us make our site more useful to visitors, to learn about the number of visitors to our site and the type of technology which our visitors use. We may compile aggregate statistics about our users in terms of numbers, traffic patterns and related site information but we do not track or record information about individuals on their visits and any such statistics will not include any personally identifying information.

Links

Our website contains links to other sites and the Department of Finance is not responsible for the privacy practices within any of these other sites. We encourage you to be aware of this when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements on other websites you visit which collect personally identifiable information.

Notification of changes to Privacy Policy

The Department of Finance reserves the right in its sole discretion to amend this privacy statement at any time, and you should regularly check this privacy statement for any amendments.

Glossary of technical terms used

Web Browser - The piece of software you use to read web pages. Examples are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Opera.

IP Address - The identifying details for your computer (or your internet company’s computer), expressed in "internet protocol" code (for example 192.168.72.34). Every computer connected to the web has a unique IP address, although the address may not be the same every time a connection is made.

Cookies - Small pieces of information, stored in simple text files, placed on your computer by a web site. Cookies can be read by the web site on your subsequent visits. The information stored in a cookie may relate to your browsing habits on the web page, or a unique identification number so that the web site can "remember" you on your return visit. Generally speaking, cookies do not contain personal information from which you can be identified, unless you have furnished such information to the web site.