It explains how we handle and your personal information and your rights in relation to that information. Under GDPR, the Abbey Theatre is the controller of the information in relation to the processing activities described below.

Personal Information We Collect About You

We receive personal information about you that you give to us, that we collect from your visits to our theatre, website, and social media pages and that we obtain from other sources. We only collect personal information which we need and that is relevant for the purposes for which we intend to use it.

What Do We Collect?

• Your name, title and contact details (email address, telephone number, postal address);
• Any information you include in correspondence you send to us or in forms you submit to us at our theatre or when using our website or social media pages;
• Details of your orders and purchases;
• Your marketing preferences;
• The opinions and other information you provide when responding to customer surveys and feedback;
• Any personal information included in your entries to competitions that we run;
• Details of any transactions between you and us;
• Your payment card details and, in relation to certain refunds, your bank account details;
• The frequency of your use of vouchers, promotional codes and gift vouchers;
• Details of your use of our website namely traffic data, weblogs and statistical data, including where and when you clicked on certain parts of our website and details of the webpage from which you visited it;
• The date and time you used our website;
• The pages you visited on our website and how long you visited us for;
• The website address from which you accessed our website;
• If we have asked for it, details regarding when you consented to receive marketing communications from us;
• Cookie, pixels and beacon identification information (details below).

How We Collect Information

Your data is collected in the following ways:

When you purchase a ticket (or tickets), merchandise, membership or gift voucher(s) through the Abbey Theatre Box Office or website, you enter a contract with us and your name, address, email and contact number will be stored in our Box Office system, Tessitura.

We may be in touch to inform you of any changes to your purchase or cancelled performances. You may, of course, purchase a ticket (or tickets) in person without supplying the aforementioned personal data. Please be assured that we do not share your personal details with any other company without your consent.

We may also collect information from publicly available sources as part of our fundraising strategy. This may include obtaining information from individuals working on behalf of the Abbey Theatre such as our development board and from organisations who book events, talks or corporate workshops with us.

Marketing Communications

When you sign up to our mailing list, your name, address, email and contact number (if submitted) will be stored in our Box Office system, Tessitura. Signing up lets us know that you want to receive information from the Abbey Theatre about upcoming events, announcements and offers. Once this data is stored in Tessitura, with your consent, it will be used for marketing and digital advertising purposes. That means, we will communicate with you about various announcements, latest news, events and special offers.

If we request your consent and you give your consent, we may use your personal information to contact you by email, online or by post for marketing or digital marketing purposes. This also means, we will communicate with you about various announcements, latest news, events and special offers.

If you do not wish to receive communications from us, please inform us by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email newsletter received or by sending an email to info@abbeytheatre.ie

If you opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us, we keep your email address on our suppression list indefinitely to ensure that we comply with your wishes.

Your record on our database system holds the contact details you submitted to us, transactions you’ve made, a record of communications we would have sent to you, and whether or not you have given us permission to contact you and if so, what your preferred method of contact is.

Why We Collect Our Customers’ Data

Collecting data on our customers informs us on how best to communicate with you and inform you about events, and also to present you with special offers at the Abbey Theatre that we judge may be of interest to you based on your transaction history. This information helps the Abbey Theatre understand more about who our audiences are and what their preferences may be. This information helps us make decisions around the conduct of our business.

Fundraising

On the basis of our legitimate interests as a charity, to seek support and promote fundraising, we also collect information to inform our teams about prospective philanthropic donors. This allows us to provide suitable opportunities for people to support our work, should this be of interest to them. We will always ensure we conduct an appropriate legitimate interest assessment to ensure that we are not infringing on your rights.

Disclosure of your personal information

We only disclose your personal information outside our business in limited circumstances. If we do, we will put in place a contract that requires recipients to protect your personal information, unless we are legally required to share that information. Any contractors or recipients that work for us will be obliged to follow our instructions. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

We may disclose your information to our third-party service providers, agents and subcontractors (Suppliers) for the purposes of providing services to us or directly to you on our behalf, including the operation and maintenance of our website, and social media pages.

When we use Suppliers, we only disclose to them any personal information that is necessary for them to provide their services and only where we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it other than in accordance with our specific instructions.

How Your Personal Data Is Kept Confidential

In order to protect your personal data and to maintain its quality we use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive data, such as credit card details. SSL encryption is designed to make the data unreadable by anyone but us.

We also have measures in place that limits the access to your information. Only those employees who need to come into contact with that data, to provide products and services to you, will do so. Our database system has high security measures in place and all activity on your record is password protected.

The Periods For Which We Retain Your Personal Information

We are obliged to retain certain information to ensure accuracy, to help maintain quality of service and for legal, regulatory, fraud prevention and legitimate business purposes.

Other information will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was obtained by us or as required or permitted for legal, regulatory, fraud prevention and legitimate business purposes.

We will not hold your personal information in an identifiable format for any longer than is necessary for the purposes for which we collected it. For certain purposes we retain your personal information indefinitely (e.g. to supress marketing messages).

Security And Links To Other Websites

We take the security of your personal information seriously and use a variety of measures based on good industry practice to keep it secure. Nonetheless, transmissions over the internet and to our website and our social media pages may not be completely secure, so please exercise caution. When accessing links to other websites, their privacy policies, not ours, will apply to your personal information.

We employ security measures to protect the personal information you provide to us, to prevent access by unauthorised persons and unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.

The transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do everything possible to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any personal information during its transmission to us online. You accept the inherent security implications of using the internet and will not hold us responsible for any breach of security unless we are at fault.

Our website, and social media pages may contain links to other websites run by other organisations which we do not control. This policy does not apply to those other websites, so we encourage you to read their privacy policies. We specifically disclaim responsibility for their content, privacy practices and terms of use, and we make no endorsements, representations or promises about their accuracy, content or thoroughness. Your disclosure of personal information to third party websites is at your own risk.

Cookies & Web Beacons

When you use the Abbey Theatre website information is received using cookies and web beacons about your visit. Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive. They make it possible for us to provide our online ticketing service and track visitor statistics, such as returning visitors.

You can disable cookies on your computer by following the instructions outlined in your help function. However, you will be unable to purchase tickets or use any booking-related features once your cookies are disabled.

For statistical and strategic planning purposes information generated from cookies and web beacons helps us to determine:

• The number of first time and repeat visits (this is identified by the IP address of your webserver);
• The traffic on our website, pages visited, and length of time spent on the website;
• The IP address of the user’s webserver;
• The top-level domain name used (for example .ie, .com, .net, .biz);
• The previous website address from which the user reached us, including any search criteria used;
• The number of visits which shows the traffic of users around this website (for example pages accessed and documents downloaded);
• The type of web browser used by the website user.

When You Visit The Premises

We use CCTV recording equipment in and around our premises for monitoring and security purposes. CCTV cameras operate on all public access points and in the ‘front of house’ public areas of the national theatre, such as the bar, café and foyers. They do not operate in private areas such as washrooms.

Your Rights

You have certain rights in respect of your personal data and we have processes to enable you to exercise those rights.

Right of Access

This is known as a Data Subject Access Request or a DSAR in short. If you want to know if we are processing personal data relating to you and to have access to any such personal data you can contact us by emailing info@abbeytheatre.ie. In order to furnish you with a copy of your personal data that we hold, we will need to verify your identify.

You have the right to access any personal information that the Abbey Theatre processes about you and to request information about:

• What personal data we hold about you;
• The purposes of the processing;
• The categories of personal data concerned;
• The recipients to whom the personal data has/will be disclosed;
• How long we intend to store your personal data for;
• If we did not collect the data directly from you, information about the source.

Right to Rectification

If you believe that we hold any incomplete or inaccurate data about you, you have the right to ask us to correct and/or complete the information and we will strive to do so as quickly as possible – unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, at which point you will be notified.

Right to Erasure

You also have the right to request erasure of your personal data or to restrict processing (where applicable) in accordance with the data protection laws, as well as to object to any direct marketing from us. Where applicable, you have the right to data portability of your information and the right to be informed about any automated decision-making we may use.

You have a right to ask for your personal data to be erased in certain circumstances. However, this right does not apply where we have to comply with a legal obligation or where we need personal data for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. In addition, if you opt out of marketing communications or have previously opted out of marketing communications, we have to keep a record, or such opt out to ensure that we don’t contact you in the future.

If you would prefer to have your booking history removed from our database, please email info@abbeytheatre.ie and we will immediately do so.

Right to Restriction

You have a right to request that processing of personal data is restricted in certain circumstances. However, we shall still continue to process the personal data for storage purposes, for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or with your consent.

Right to Object

Where we are relying on legitimate interests in as a legal basis to process your data, you have the right to object to such processing on grounds relating to your particular situation.

Right To Complain To The Data Protection Commissioner

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission. More details can be found on their website https://dataprotection.ie/docs/Home/4.htm.

Industry Standards

The Abbey Theatre’s Privacy Policy is in accordance with GDPR Standards 2018, the Data Protection Acts 1988 & 2003 along with the Statutory Instrument Number 535 of 2003 European Communities (Electronic Communications Networks and Services) (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations 2003 (“SI 535/2003”).

Contact Details

If you have any queries please contact info@abbeytheatre.ie or call (01) 87 87 222.

Opening Hours: Monday to Saturday, 12pm – 7pm