Background

The Student Assistance Fund (SAF) provides financial support to students who are experiencing short or long-term financial difficulties while attending higher education. The SAF is funded by the Irish Government.

The University requires to process and retain personal data relating to you as an applicant for the SAF. The University will in compliance with the GDPR respect the confidentiality of your data and implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to prevent unauthorised disclosure.

Types of Information Collected

In order to process your application, the categories of personal data provided by you and collected by the Institute are:

• name, address and contact details, date of birth, PPS number
• marital and family status
• nationality
• details of previous and current/future education
• employment details
• bank details
• name, address and contact details, PPS number of parent/guardian
• marital and family status of parent/guardian
• employment details of parent/guardian
• details of income of parent/guardian
• Ethnic Origin

How we Collect Information

The University obtains the personal data and special category data it holds about you through your Student Assistance Fund Application Form and relevant documentation submitted with this application.

We also obtain data from the Student Record System.

 

Purpose and Legal Basis of Collecting Information

We will use personal data you provide in this application process for the purposes of facilitating your application to the Student Assistance Fund.

The University will ensure that your data is processed fairly and lawfully in keeping with the principles of data protection.

For the purposes of processing applications for the Student Assistance Fund, the University legitimises its processing activities on a variety of lawful basis as follows;

 

• Article 6 (a) Consent: the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;
• Article 6 (b) Contract: the processing is necessary to fulfil the terms of our contract with you
• Article 6 (c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary to comply with the law
• Article 6 (e) Public Interest: processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;

 

To comply with reporting and audit requirements, HEI's return data on participants in the SAF to the Higher Education Authority (HEA).

Your data will be held securely and will not be shared with any external third parties, other than prescribed by HEA requirements. You have a right to ask for a copy of any personal data held about you and to have any inaccuracies in such personal data corrected. In completing the application form, you understand and agree that your personal details will be used by SAF for the purposes outlined above.

Sharing Information

Applicants may be called to attend an interview with representatives from the Student Assistance Fund Committee to discuss the details of your application. You application form and documents will be shared with the Committee for this purpose.

Data storage

We keep your data secure on a restricted access server. Access is limited only to staff that require it.

Data Retention

We will hold your data for 10 years in compliance with the University's Retention Schedule.

We may keep your data for longer than if required to do so for legal reasons, or for limited research or statistical purposes for which it will be anonymised. If we do, we will make sure that your privacy is protected and only use it for those purposes.

Individuals Rights

Individuals whose personal data and sensitive personal data/special category data is held by the University have the following rights regarding their data:

• The right to be informed
• The right to request access to their personal data held by the Institute.
• The right to rectification – to have inaccurate or incomplete personal data rectified.
• The right to erasure of personal data – this will only apply where there is no legitimate reason for the University to continue to process the personal data.  If you exercise your right to erasure, we will retain a core set of personal data which, for alumni, will include: name, subject(s) studied, graduation details, date of birth and unique identification number so that we do not contact you inadvertently in future, and to maintain your education details for archive purposes. We may also need to retain some financial records about you
• The right to restrict the processing of personal data – individuals have the right to block the processing of their personal data by the Institute in specific situations.
• The right to data portability – students have the right to request provision of some elements of their information (for example academic progress details) in digital form in order to provide it to other organisations.
• The right to object – students can object to the processing of their personal data by the University in certain circumstances, including the sending and receipt of direct marketing material.
• The right to object to automated decision making and profiling – individuals have the right to object to decisions taken by automatic means without human intervention in some circumstances.  

If you are unhappy with the University's handling of your personal data, or believe that the requirements of the Data Protection Acts or GDPR may not be fully complied with, you should contact the University's Data Protection Officer in the first instance. The formal complaint procedure can be invoked if appropriate, and you also have the right to submit a complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner.

 

A copy of the full Student Assistance Fund Privacy Statement can be obtained from the MTU Cork Campus Access Service or by emailing student.assistancecork@mtu.ie

CONTACT DETAILS

Carmel Hayes
Data Protection Officer
Email: carmel.hayes@mtu.ie
Tel: 021 4326759