Last updated: 11/07/26
The Irish Menopause Institute (“we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect when you use irishmenopauseinstitute.ie, why we collect it, and what rights you have over it.
We are the data controller for the information described in this policy.
1. Who we are and how to contact us
Irish Menopause Institute
Email: smeehan@irishmenopauseinstitute.ie
If you have any question about this policy or about how we handle your information, please contact us at the email address above.
2. Information we collect
Information you give us directly
When you complete our contact form or email us, we collect:
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your phone number (if you provide it)
- The content of your message and any information you choose to include in it
Information you give us when you comment
If you leave a comment on one of our news articles, we collect the information shown in the comment form — your name, your email address, and your comment — along with your IP address and browser information, which help us detect spam.
Comments are public. Your name and your comment will be visible to anyone who visits that page. Your email address is not published. Please think carefully before including personal or health information in a public comment — if you would like to discuss something privately, please contact us directly instead.
Comments may be held for moderation before they appear. An anonymised string created from your email address (a “hash”) may be sent to the Gravatar service to check whether you have a profile picture associated with it; Gravatar’s privacy policy is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/.
Information about your health
Because of the nature of our work, you may choose to tell us about your symptoms, your health or your personal circumstances when you contact us. Information about your health is treated as a special category of personal data under data protection law and is given additional protection.
We only use this information to understand and respond to your enquiry. Please only share health information with us if you are comfortable doing so — you are never required to. If you would prefer not to include personal health details in a written enquiry, you are welcome to simply request a call back.
Information collected automatically
When you visit our website, we and our service providers may automatically collect:
- Your IP address and approximate location (country/region level)
- Your browser type, device type and operating system
- The pages you visit, links you click, and how you move and scroll through pages
- The date and time of your visit, and the website you arrived from
3. How we use your information
If you contact us, we use your information only to respond to your enquiry — to answer your question, provide the information you asked for, or arrange a consultation, programme or booking with you.
We will not add you to a marketing list simply because you contacted us. We will only send you marketing or promotional material (such as newsletters or updates about our programmes) if you have separately and expressly opted in to receive it. If you do opt in, you can withdraw your consent and unsubscribe at any time — every marketing email contains an unsubscribe link, and you can also email us to be removed.
We also use website analytics information to understand how visitors use our site so that we can improve its structure, content and usability.
4. Our legal basis for using your information
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we rely on the following legal bases:
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Responding to your enquiry | Legitimate interests — to answer the query you have chosen to send us; or steps taken at your request prior to entering a contract |
| Handling health information you include in an enquiry | Your explicit consent, given by choosing to include it so that we can respond appropriately |
| Publishing your comment on a news article | Your consent, given by choosing to submit the comment |
| Sending you marketing communications | Your consent (opt-in) |
| Website analytics and cookies (other than strictly necessary ones) | Your consent, given through our cookie banner |
| Keeping our website secure and operational | Legitimate interests — to protect our site and its visitors |
5. Cookies and website analytics
When you first visit our website you will see a cookie banner allowing you to accept or reject non-essential cookies. Cookies that are not strictly necessary are only set after you consent, and you can change or withdraw your choice at any time through the cookie settings on our site.
Strictly necessary cookies
These are required for the website to function and to remember your cookie preferences. They do not require your consent.
Comment cookies
If you leave a comment, you may opt in to saving your name and email address in cookies so that you do not have to re-enter them next time you comment. These cookies last for one year and are set only if you choose that option.
Cookies for website administrators
If you log in to manage this website (which applies only to our own staff and website administrators, not to visitors), WordPress sets cookies to store your login details and screen display preferences. These cookies are only set for logged-in administrator accounts.
Analytics — Microsoft Clarity
With your consent, we use Microsoft Clarity, an analytics service provided by Microsoft. Clarity helps us understand how visitors use our website by collecting usage data such as pages viewed, clicks, scrolling behaviour, and session recordings and heatmaps (a reconstructed playback of how a visitor moved through the site).
Clarity is configured to mask text that visitors type, so that information entered into forms is not captured in recordings. Microsoft acts as our service provider for this purpose and may process this data outside the European Economic Area (see section 7).
You can read more in Microsoft’s privacy statement: https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement
6. Who we share your information with
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes.
We share information with service providers who help us operate our website and respond to you. These providers act on our instructions and are bound to protect your information:
- Hostinger — our website hosting provider. Our website, its server logs, and the enquiries submitted through our contact form are stored on Hostinger’s servers.
- Microsoft — Microsoft provides both our email service (used to send and receive email, including our replies to your enquiry and any marketing emails you have opted into) and the Clarity analytics service described above.
Our contact form is operated using WPForms software. Enquiries submitted through the form are stored in our own website database and are not shared with WPForms; we have disabled the optional usage-data sharing setting within the plugin.
We may also disclose information where we are required to do so by law.
7. International transfers
Some of our service providers, including Microsoft — which provides both our email and our website analytics — may process personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Where this happens, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place — such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, or a finding that the destination country provides an adequate level of protection — so that your data continues to receive protection equivalent to that guaranteed within the EEA.
8. How long we keep your information
- Enquiries and correspondence: we retain enquiries and our correspondence with you so that we have a record of your query and can assist you properly if you contact us again. We do not delete this correspondence on a fixed schedule. You can ask us to delete your enquiry and our correspondence with you at any time, and we will do so — see section 10.
- Comments: published comments and their associated data remain on the site until you or we remove them. You can ask us to delete your comment at any time.
- Marketing contacts: we keep your details until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you.
- Analytics data: retained in line with Microsoft Clarity’s retention period.
- Server and security logs: retained for a short period for security and troubleshooting purposes.
We review the information we hold periodically and delete anything we no longer need.
9. How we protect your information
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), access controls, and secure, reputable service providers. However, no method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Please bear in mind that email is not a fully secure method of communication. If you are sending us sensitive information, you may prefer to keep written detail to a minimum and ask us to call you.
10. Your rights
Under data protection law you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you
- Rectify information that is inaccurate or incomplete
- Erase your information (“right to be forgotten”) in certain circumstances
- Restrict or object to our processing of your information
- Data portability — receive your information in a portable format
- Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent (including unsubscribing from marketing, or changing your cookie preferences)
To exercise any of these rights, please email smeehan@irishmenopauseinstitute.ie. We will respond within one month.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Irish supervisory authority:
Data Protection Commission 21 Fitzwilliam Square South, Dublin 2, D02 RD28 Website: www.dataprotection.ie
11. Children
Our website and services are intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with a revised “last updated” date.
13. Our role
The Irish Menopause Institute provides education, guidance and support. We do not replace medical care, diagnosis or treatment. Information you share with us is not a medical record, and contacting us does not create a clinical relationship.
