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Survey Name

Adult Education Survey

Survey purpose and legal basis

The Adult Education Survey(AES) is a large-scale voluntary household survey carried out by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) under Section 24 of the Statistics Act, 1993. The survey is run every 5 years and collects information focusing on  participants’ educational background, attainment and life-long learning. This meets the requirements of Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 October 2019.

All personal data collected is lawfully processed under Articles 6(1)(e), and 9(2)(j) of the General Data Protection Regulation and Section 38(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. 

Who uses the results?

The results from the AES are only ever made available in aggregate form to the public and we make sure that it is impossible for individuals to be identified.

There is wide national usage from other Government Departments and research bodies. International users also access data from Eurostat and the OECD

Anonymised survey information may be provided to other government departments, approved organisations and approved researchers for statistical purposes only.

Is your personal data confidential and how long will the data be retained?

Yes. All information supplied to the CSO is treated as strictly confidential.  The Statistics Act 1993 sets stringent confidentiality standards: information collected may be used only for statistical purposes and no details that might be related to an identifiable person or business undertaking may be divulged to any other government department or body.

Survey data files are retained indefinitely for statistical analysis purposes only.

The sources and categories of your personal data, where the data has not been collected directly from you:

N/A

For further information on this survey, your Data Protection rights and how your data is used please contact:

Andrew Powell, Household Data Collection, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E

Tel: (+353) 21 453 5341 E-mail: andrew.powell@cso.ie

Data Protection Information:

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:

  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission. Contact details: Office of the Data Protection Commission, 21 Fitzwilliam Square South, Dublin 2, D02 RD28, Ireland.
  • The right to request access, rectification, erasure, restriction or to object to the processing of your personal data.

However, because your data is processed for statistical purposes these rights may be limited in accordance with Article 89 of the GDPR. This is due to the fact that the exercise of any of these rights may render impossible, or seriously impair, the achievement of the statistical processing and such restriction maybe necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.

Central Statistics Office Data Protection Officer Contact Details: