By accessing this website you are agreeing to the EPA Privacy Policy
This statement relates to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) privacy practices in connection with this website. The EPA fully respects your right to privacy, and will not collect any personal data about you through this website that you do not give voluntarily. Any personal data that you volunteer to the EPA will be treated with the highest standards of security and confidentiality, strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003. The EPA is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other websites that are/may be linked to this site. Any external links to other websites are clearly identifiable as such.
The EPA does not collect any personal data about you on this website, apart from information which you volunteer by e-mailing us or by using our email updates or online feedback form.
The personal data collected in the email updates form on this website – name, email address, county and organisation – is maintained to provide a mailing list for EPA Water Programme and Bathing Water Information.
We are currently migrating from Mailchimp to Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) for managing our email communications. During this process, your personal data may be stored in both platforms. Brevo is an EU-based email marketing platform that acts as a data processor under GDPR and processes your data solely for the purpose of sending communications on our behalf. Once the migration is complete, all personal data will be deleted from Mailchimp. Both Mailchimp and Brevo accounts are managed by the EPA and your data is not used for any other purpose and is not distributed to any other systems or organisations. You can view Brevo’s privacy policy here.
You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any email sent to you. We use tracking in emails to measure open rates and link clicks, in order to assess and improve our communications.
We record consent details (date, method, and form used) to demonstrate compliance with GDPR. Our lawful basis for processing your email address is your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR).
This website is secured by a SSL certificate and is hosted on secure infrastructure to prevent the unauthorised retrieval of personal data collected for mailing list purposes.
We retain your email address and related data for as long as you remain subscribed. If you unsubscribe, we will remove your data within 12 months unless required for legal compliance.
Using our feedback form generates an email with the information you volunteer which is sent to hello@beaches.ie for our attention. Personal information you provide in this way is not made available to any third parties without your consent, and is used by the EPA only for the purpose for which you provided it.
We do not hold any information in relation to reporting a missing ringbuoy and direct you to the official website ringbuoys.ie to report a missing ringbuoy.
We do not hold any information in relation to reporting other environmental issues and direct you to report an environmental issue via the ‘See it, Say it’ iPhone or Android app.
If there are updates to the details of this Privacy Policy, we will post those changes and update the revision date at the top of this document, so you will always know what information we collect online, how we use it, and what choices you have.
More information on data privacy rights is available directly from the website of the Irish Data Protection commissioner.
Updated 01 April, 2026