Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy

The following terms and conditions (the “Terms“) apply to your use of the website www.housebuild.ie (the “Website“) and any related services provided by HouseBuild in connection with the Website (the “Services“).

For the purpose of this document, “use” includes visiting the Website, browsing any information or material which has been made available on the Website (“Content“), uploading Content, or registering to use any Services.

The website is operated by Building Compliance Limited t/a HouseBuild (“we” / “our” / “HouseBuild“) and these Terms set out the rights and obligations of all users (“you” / “your” / “User“) in relation to your use of the Website.

Please review these Terms carefully. By entering our site or creating an account you are accepting these Terms, you have been notified of the following Terms and our Privacy Policy below.

If you do not agree to these Terms or the Privacy Policy, please immediately refrain from using theWebsite as we do not agree to providing Services to you.

HouseBuild reserves the right to remove any Account or Content uploaded by a user (the “User Content”) that we determine to be illegal, offensive, threatening, libellous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable. We reserve the right to take similar action if we determine that the Account or User Content infringes the rights and freedoms of others, or violates the terms set out in these Terms. Such actions will be undertaken at our sole discretion, but we assume no obligation to do so in every circumstance.

By submitting Content which is subsequently made available on the Website to the general public, you assume all risks associated with the Content. This includes any reliance placed on the quality, accuracy, and completeness of the information provided by other visitors to the Website.

Purposefully submitting Content which is known to be incorrect or misleading may attract personal liability. You also assume the risk associated with submitting illegal or immoral Content which violates

any law or regulation.

You may not sell, copy, reproduce, distribute, modify or otherwise exploit intellectual property owned by HouseBuild. We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in the Website and the content (except where specifically identified as third party content), and in the material published on it. The HouseBuild intellectual property includes, but is not limited to, guidelines, graphics, design, branding, computer code and interactive features.

Except for the making of a hard copy print for your own personal use only or the use of others in your organisation (or downloading the material for your own personal use or the use of others in your organisation only provided that you retain all copyright and proprietary notices), the materials on this Website may not be copied, reproduced, transmitted, distributed or displayed, by any means, without the express written consent of HouseBuild.

You must not use any part of the materials on the Website for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our affiliates.

Any personal data which you provide in connection with your use of the Website or Services will be

processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which is available via the following link: [INSERT

HYPERLINK FOR PRIVACY POLICY].

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HOUSEBUILD EXCLUDES ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS, WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS, OR OTHER TERMS WHICH MAY APPLY TO THE CONTENT ON THE WEBSITE OR THE SERVICES THAT WE PROVIDE.

HOUSEBUILD WILL NOT BE HELD LIABLE TO ANY USER FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE ARISING FROM THE USE OF OUR WEBSITE OR SERVICES, WHETHER ARISING IN CONTRACT, TORT, STATUTORY DUTY, OR OTHERWISE.

WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF INFORMATION PROVIDED BY OTHER USERS OF THE WEBSITE, AND WE DISCLAIM ALL LIABILITY FOR ANY DETRIMENT SUFFERED AS A RESULT OF RELIANCE ON SUCH INFORMATION.

HOUSEBUILD RESERVES THE RIGHT TO AMEND OR UPDATE INACCURATE INFORMATION ON THE WEBSITE AT OUR OWN DISCRETION, BUT WE ASSUME NO OBLIGATION TO DO SO IN EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE.

IN CASES WHERE LINKS TO THIRD PARTY SERVICES ARE PROVIDED ON OUR WEBSITE, HOUSEBUILD ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THESE SERVICES. SUCH CONTENT AND LINKS ARE PROVIDED FOR YOUR INFORMATION ONLY, AND YOUR USE OR RELIANCE ON THE THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

ANY SERVICES PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY IN CONNECTION WITH OUR WEBSITE MAY BE SUBJECT TO ADDITIONAL TERMS OF SERVICE. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO REVIEW AND FAMILIARISE YOURSELF WITH THESE TERMS.

WE ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS THAT YOU CONDUCT WITH ANOTHER USER, EITHER IN PERSON OR VIA AN ONLINE PAYMENT SERVICE. YOU CARRY OUT SUCH TRANSACTIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

The Website is provided on an “as available” basis. Although we will make every reasonable effort to ensure continued uninterrupted access, there may be occasions where such access will be unavailable.

HouseBuild reserves the right to modify the Website, Content, and Services at any time without the requirement to provide notice.

If we make changes to these Terms or to the Privacy Policy, we will notify you by providing appropriate notice on our website. The date on which this agreement was last updated will also be indicated at the top of this webpage. Once you have received notification of such changes, your continued use of our Website and Services will indicate your awareness and understanding of those changes.

If you do not agree to be bound by any changes to these Terms, you will not be able to continue to use our Website and Services.

The Irish courts will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising from, or related to, a visit to the Website although we retain the right to bring proceedings against you for breach of these conditions in your country of residence or any other relevant country.

These Terms and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of Ireland.

HouseBuild reserves the right to restrict, remove, or prevent access to our Website and Services if you fail to comply with these Terms. Such actions are at our sole discretion.

We also the reserve the right to reclaim an Account on behalf of a business or individual which is legally entitled to it, in cases where an Account has been created fraudulently.

If any of these Terms are determined by any competent authority to be invalid, unlawful or unenforceable to any extent, such term, condition or provision will to the extent be severed from the remaining terms, conditions and provisions which will continue to be valid to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Should you have any complaints regarding the Website, Services, or these Terms, please direct these

to the following email address: info@housebuild.ie .

Purpose of Processing 

Legal Basis

Managing and operating our website – to keep it updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy. This includes:

website metrics and other analytics data;

cookies and feedback and comments we receive.

Such data will be used in optimising marketing strategies and customer communications.

This processing is necessary to support our legitimate interests in managing our business, provided such interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.

You have the right to object at any time where processing is based on our legitimate interests.

We have carried out a balancing test to ensure that your interests do not override our legitimate business interest. 

We will obtain your consent prior to sending you marketing materials or other communications for the purpose of advertising our services.
To opt out of receiving marketing materials, please email support@housebuild.ie.

Other processing purposes

If we intend to process your personal data for any other purpose, we will make available information on this purpose and the legal basis for the processing.

Your information is securely stored on our document storage platforms.

We will retain personal data for the following retention periods:

Documents Retained

Retention Period

User account information (e.g. usernames, passwords, email addresses).

7 years:

Actions founded on breach of contract may be brought for up to six years from the date on which the cause of action occurred, plus a 1 year period to allow the service of the claim (Statute of Limitations 1957, s.11).

Contact details for marketing purposes (e.g. email addresses, social media data).

We will retain this data for as long as you opt in to receive marketing communications.

Should you inform us that you wish to opt out of receiving such communications, this information will be securely deleted without undue delay.

Record of all correspondence (e.g. requests, complaints, advice, warnings, information)

7 years:

Actions founded on breach of contract may be brought for up to six years from the date on which the cause of action occurred, plus a 1 year period to allow the service of the claim (Statute of Limitations 1957, s.11).

User account information (e.g. usernames, passwords, email addresses).

Deleted once account de-activated. 

Personal data may be disclosed to:

   - Subcontractors and service providers.

   - Professional advisers (lawyers, accountants, financial advisers etc.)

   - Regulators and government authorities in connection with our compliance procedures and obligations.

    - A purchaser or prospective purchaser of all or part of our assets or our business, and their professional advisers, in connection with the purchase.

Other third parties on occasions where we are authorised or required by law to do so.

The lawful basis for processing your personal data is our legitimate interest, as follows

  - to enable us to manage, on a holistic basis, our relationship with you by maintaining a single view of your use of our website and any products or services that we provide to you and any interaction with us. This enables us to create a profile for you and to assess your needs better;

  -to carry out statistical analysis, market research and to develop predictive and analytical models for different purposes including risk analysis, process improvements, marketing and fraud analysis. 

  - to investigate complaints and establish, exercise and safeguard our rights under any agreement with you, including where necessary to engage tracing agencies, to consult professional advisors authorised to act on behalf of HouseBuild,  and to respond to claims made against HouseBuild;

  - to conduct direct marketing of products or services, however, please be aware that you have a right to object to such processing at any stage by contacting us on the details below;

  - to undertake system testing to guarantee software code quality, in particular, to test software code changes, to validate the stability of software changes and accept the software code changes and to run technical tests, like performance, resilience, operational proving testing.

Security and where we store your personal data:

We cannot guarantee the complete security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal data transmitted through our website. Any transmission of personal data is at your own risk.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We securely store your personal data in a centralised database, with controlled access to such database. Access to personal data in both electronic and paper form is restricted to HouseBuild employees who have a legitimate and justifiable reason to view such data. Any hard copies of your personal data are kept in Ireland by HouseBuild. Electronic copies of your personal data are stored online using WordPress. These third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

In the event of a suspected data security breach, we will follow required procedure and will notify you and the Irish Data Protection Commission of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Transfers of personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

The personal data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the EEA (including to service providers who may be located, or store data, outside the EEA) for the purposes described above. We will ensure suitable safeguards are in place to protect the privacy and

integrity of your personal data in such circumstances. You can obtain information pertaining to these safeguards by contacting us at support@housebuild.ie.

You have various rights under the GDPR, including the right to access, rectification, and erasure. In each case, these rights are subject to restrictions as laid down by law.

The following is a summary of your rights:

-The right of access enables you to receive a copy of your personal data;

-The right to rectification enables you to correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you;

-The right to erasure enables you to request that we delete your personal data in certain circumstances;

-The right to restrict processing enables you to ask us to halt the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances;

-The right to object enables you to object to us processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests (or those of a third party);

-The right to data portability enables you to request us to transmit personal data that you have provided to us, to a third party without hindrance, or to give you a copy of it so that you can transmit it to a third party, where technically feasible.

When you visit the HouseBuild website, browser data (e.g. the IP address) is collected anonymously from you by Google Analytics in order to improve the site and customer service. This data is not used to identify individuals and will be automatically deleted 14 months after collection.

A cookie is a small data file that is placed on your computer or mobile device (“Device”). It allows a website to remember your actions or preferences over a length of time. Some of the cookies we use are essential for our website to work. We also use some non-essential cookies to collect information for making reports and to help us improve the website.

The table below explains the cookies we use and why:

Cookie Name

Purpose 

_gid

This cookie is associated with Google Universal Analytics. It is used to store and update a unique value for each page visited.

_ga

This cookie is associated with Google Universal Analytics. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default, it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.

test_cookie

This cookie is set by DoubleClick (which is owned by Google) to determine if the website visitor’s browser supports cookies.

_gat_gtag

Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager.

Most web browsers give you some control over cookies through the browser settings. However, turning cookies off may interfere with your browsing experience.

For instructions on how to manage and disable cookies, visit the browser developer’s website. If you use multiple Devices and/or browsers, you will need to disable cookies on each Device and on each browser separately.

Find out how to manage and disable cookies on popular browsers:

-Google Chrome

-Mozilla Firefox

-Microsoft Internet Explorer

-Apple Safari

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

This Privacy Notice applies only to our website. The website may contain links to other web sites not operated or controlled by us (“Third Party Sites”). The policies and procedures we describe here do not apply to Third Party Sites and we are not responsible for Third-Party Sites’ content, any use of Third Party Sites, or the privacy practices of Third-Party Sites. Any links from this website do not imply that we endorse or have reviewed Third Party Sites. We suggest contacting those sites directly for information on their privacy policies.

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Notice from time to time at our sole discretion. If we make any changes, we will post those changes here and update the “Last Updated” date at the bottom of this Privacy Notice. However, if we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify you by means of a prominent notice on the website prior to the change becoming effective. Please review this Privacy Notice periodically for updates.

Building Compliance Limited is a registered company (no. 534360) with an address at 50 Lower Salthill, Galway, Ireland. 

Questions, comments, requests and complaints regarding this Privacy Notice and the personal data we hold are welcome and should be addressed to info@housebuild.ie. All requests will be dealt with promptly and efficiently.

Last Updated: 18th January 2021