Privacy Policy
Mary’s Meals Ireland Website Privacy Notice
About this Privacy Notice
Mary’s Meals Ireland (“Mary’s Meals”, “we”, “us” or “our”) operates the Mary’s Meals domain (”marysmeals.ie”) with a registered address of P23, St Patrick’s Hall, Marino Institute of Education, Griffith Avenue, Dublin 9, Ireland.
In this Privacy Notice, your personal data means any information which Mary’s Meals processes about you from which you can be directly or indirectly personally identified (“Personal Data”).
This Privacy Notice applies to Personal Data that we collect and process in the course of our charitable services, including your interactions online at marysmeals.ie.
If you interact with marysmeals.ie, Mary’s Meals acts as data controller.
If you have any questions on this Privacy Notice, please contact our Privacy Team at ireland@marysmeals.org.
How We Collect Your Personal Data
We collect your Personal Data in two ways:
Information you provide to us
We will collect and store any information you provide to us when you:
use our website;
opt-in to marketing campaigns;
make a donation on our website;
registering to volunteer with us;
take part in Mary’s Meals’ social media functions; and
voluntarily provide information during your interaction with us.
We may also collect information about you that is provided by third parties in circumstances where you make a donation to us through a third-party website, such as iDonate and GoFundMe (and you have given the third-party permission to share information with us).
We will collect cookie data when you visit our website.
Categories of Personal Data Collected
The table below details the categories of Personal Data that we collect in connection with our Services. Mary’s Meals acts as data controller with respect to this Personal Data.
When you use our website | ||
Category of Personal Data | Personal Data We Collect | Description |
Device/IP Data | IP address, Operating system and browser used to access our website, Internet Service Provider, and External website from which the user is directed to the website. | This information is collected through the settings on our website. For further information, please see our Cookies Policy. |
When you opt-in to our marketing campaigns | ||
Category of Personal Data | Personal Data We Collect | Description |
Contact Details | Name, Email address, Postal address. | We process this information when you agree to receive marketing communications from us. |
When you make a card donation on our website | ||
Category of Personal Data | Personal Data We Collect | Description |
Contact Details | Name, Email address, Billing address. | This information is collected to process your donation to Mary’s Meals. |
Payment Information | Card details. | This information is processed when you make a card donation online. |
When you register to volunteer with us | ||
Category of Personal Data | Personal Data We Collect | Description |
Contact Details | Name, Email address, County, Phone Number, Consent to Contract. | This information is collected to process your registration to volunteer with us. |
Photographic ID | Personal Photograph | This information is collected in order to issue an ID card to be used when collecting money on behalf of Mary's Meals. |
Information that you may voluntarily provide in the course of your interaction with us | ||
Category of Personal Data | Personal Data We Collect | Description |
Requests in Relation to Material and Resource Packs | Email address, Postal address, Phone Number. | This information is collected when you request material/resource packs from us including school resources, sponsorship cards and prayer cards. |
Purposes for Processing Personal Data
Ireland requires a legal basis for processing your Personal Data and our legal basis for collecting and using the Personal Data described above will depend on the Personal Data concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. We will only process your Personal Data if we have a lawful basis for doing so.
The lawful bases are explained below:
Performance of a Contract: When it is necessary for Mary’s Meals to process your Personal Data to:
Comply with legal obligations under a contract with you, or
To verify information before entering into a contract with you.
Legitimate Interest: Where Mary’s Meals has an interest in using your Personal Data in a certain way, which is necessary and proportionate in light of purpose as a charitable organisation.
Consent: When Mary’s Meals asks you to actively indicate your agreement to Mary’s Meals’ use of your Personal Data for a certain purpose, including marketing communications.
Compliance with Legal Obligations: When Mary’s Meals must process your Personal Data to comply with a law.
The table below details how Mary’s Meals will use your Personal Data and the accompanying lawful basis.
Purpose | Lawful Basis | Categories of Personal Data Processed |
Provision of Products, Services and Information
To provide Products, Services and Information in accordance with our contract with you.
For example, when we use your Personal Data to:
| Performance of a Contract. | Contact Data. |
Volunteer Management
To process your volunteer registration and issue a Mary's Meals ID to be used when collecting money on behalf Mary's Meals | Legitimate Interest including to protect the safety of our volunteers. | Contact Data, Photographic ID. |
Payment Processing
To process your donation to Mary’s Meals and assist in you claiming under the Revenue Charitable Donation Scheme.
| Performance of a Contract. | Contact Data, Payment Information. |
Marketing
For marketing, promotion and advertising purposes where the law requires us to collect your consent.
For example, when the law requires consent for email marketing.
| Consent. | Contact Data (Marketing). |
Information Provided on a Voluntary Basis
To provide certain voluntary services as part of your interaction with us. When this is the case, we will ask for your consent.
For example, when we use your Personal Data to:
| Consent
Legitimate Interest including to improve our service provision. | Request. |
Breach of Mary’s Meals Terms and Conditions
To take appropriate action when our policies or terms and conditions are infringed.
| Legitimate Interest including to protect the safety of our volunteers and improving our service provision. | Contact Data. |
Legal Claims
To establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
For example, if we are involved in litigation and we must provide information to our lawyers in relation to that legal issue. | Legitimate Interest including to seek legal advice and to protect ourselves, our clients or others in legal proceedings. | Device/IP Data, Contact Data, Payment Information, Contact Details (Marketing). |
Compliance with Legal Obligations
To comply with legal obligations we are subject to. For example:
| Compliance with Legal Obligations.
Legitimate Interest including compliance with charity legal requirements. | Device/IP Data, Contact Data, Payment Information, Contact Details (Marketing). |
Compliance with law enforcement requests To comply with a request from law enforcement, courts, or other competent authorities.
| Compliance with Legal Obligations, Legitimate Interest, including to assist law enforcement authorities with prevention or detection of serious crime. | Device/IP Data, Contact Data, Payment Information, Contact Details (Marketing). |
Where required by applicable data privacy laws, we will only use your Personal Data for the purposes for which we collect it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your Personal Data for any other reasonable purposes in connection with our engagement with you, the purpose and legal basis for any other further processing will be notified in advance from time to time.
How We Share Your Personal Data
We disclose your Personal Data to service providers and other parties listed in this section. Mary’s Meals does not sell your Personal Data.
Mary’s Meals International Organisation
We will share your Personal Data with Mary’s Meals International Organisation (“MMI”) in their role as provider of the Mary’s Meals supporter database platform. MMI will only access Personal Data if requested to do so by us, to assist us in the delivery of our services.
Service Providers and Affiliates
We will share Personal Data with our service providers and affiliates so that they can provide services to us. Our service providers help us to provide the website and services to you. We carefully selected our service providers and we take corresponding measures to protect your Personal Data when service providers are engaged.
We do not allow, and we ensure MMI does not allow these service providers to use your Personal Data for their own purposes or disclose it to other third parties.
Legal Obligations
We may share any Personal Data where this is required by law or regulation, or court or administrative order having force of law, or where required by any of Mary’s Meals’ regulators.
Business Transfers
Your Personal Data may be transferred to a different entity, and our legal or other advisors, if we undergo, or evaluate, a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other transaction (or proposed transaction) in which that entity assumes control of our business or assets of our business (in whole or in part).
Transfers of Personal Data
Your Personal Data may be transferred to and/or stored in locations outside of Ireland, but within the European Economic Area (“EEA”), where the GDPR is applicable. We will always take steps to ensure that any international transfer of Personal Data is carefully managed to protect your rights and interests.
Your Personal Data may be processed by partners and service providers operating outside the EEA who work for one of our MMI suppliers. Many of the countries will be ones which the European Commission has approved and will have data privacy laws which are the same as or broadly equivalent to those in the European Union. However, some transfers may be to countries which do not have equivalent protections, and for those transfers Mary’s Meals implements appropriate transfer mechanisms, including the EU’s Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of Personal Data.
You have the right to ask us for more information about the safeguards we have put in place (including a copy of relevant contractual commitments) as mentioned above. Contact us if you would like to receive further information or to request a copy of the relevant safeguard (which may be redacted to ensure confidentiality).
Data Security and Retention
We seek to protect your Personal Data from unauthorised access, use and disclosure using appropriate physical, technical and organisation security measures based on the type of Personal Data and how we are processing that Personal Data.
The transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.
We retain Personal Data about you for as long as you engage with us in achieving our mission to enable people to offer their money, goods, skills, time or prayer, and through this involvement, provide the most effective help to those suffering the effects of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest communities. In some cases, we retain Personal Data for longer, if doing so is necessary to comply with our legal obligations or is otherwise required by applicable law, rule or regulation. In general, Mary’s Meals will hold this information for a period of 6 months after you cease to interact with us, unless we are obliged to hold it for a longer period under law or applicable regulations.
Any Personal Data is deleted or rendered unavailable as soon as the purpose of storage no longer applies. The data is also rendered unavailable or deleted when a prescribed storage duration mandated by the laws in Ireland expires, unless there is a necessity for the continued storage of the data to ensure we do not communicate with individuals who have asked us not to.
Automated Decisions
Automated decisions are defined as decisions about individuals that are based solely on the automated processing of data and that produce legal effects that significantly affect the individuals involved. Mary’s Meals will not make automated decisions in relation to you or to your Personal Data when requested by you. We will ensure that you can always obtain a review by one of our staff members of any automated decisions.
Personal Data of Children
We do not knowingly process Personal Data of children who are under 16 years old. If we need to process Personal Data of children we will only do so where we obtain the consent of their parent(s) or guardian(s).
Your Rights in relation to Personal Data
You have rights over your Personal Data as a data subject under the GDPR. We set out below data subject rights under the GDPR.
As a data subject in Ireland, under the GDPR you are entitled to a right to:
Request access to your Personal Data. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the Personal Data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
Request erasure of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your Personal Data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
Object to processing of your Personal Data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation, which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
Request the restriction of processing of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your Personal Data, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer of your Personal Data to another party.
Withdraw your consent at any time if your Personal Data is processed on the basis of consent. If you withdraw your consent, this will not affect the lawfulness of how we used your Personal Data before you withdrew consent.
Lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority if you consider that the processing of your Personal Data infringes applicable law. We request that you contact us in the first instance so that we can respond to your complaint. The contact details are available here: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en.
You can request to exercise the rights above by contacting us using the details below. Further information on these rights, and the circumstances in which they may arise in connection with our processing of your Personal Data, can be obtained by contacting us at irealnd@marysmeals.org.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
We constantly try to improve our services, so we may need to change this Privacy Notice from time to time to reflect changes in technology, law, business operations or any other reason we determine is necessary or appropriate.
Contact Information
If you have any questions or queries about this Privacy Notice, the ways in which we collect and use your Personal Data or your choices and rights regarding such collection and use, please do not hesitate to contact us at:
Phone: 01 853 5163
Email: ireland@marysmeals.org
Address: P23 St Patrick’s Hall, Marino Institute of Education, Griffith Avenue, Dublin 9, Ireland
Last Updated: April 2025
