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Survey Name

National Farm Survey Sample for Teagasc

Survey purpose and legal basis

The purpose of this activity is to supply Teagasc with a sample of farm holder names and addresses to make it possible for the National Farm Survey (NFS) to take place. The survey is operated as part of the Farm Accountancy Data Network of the EU and fulfils Ireland’s statutory obligation (Council Regulation (EC) No 1217/2009) to provide data on farm output, costs and income to the European Commission. 

There is a memorandum of understanding between the CSO and Teagasc under Section 11(1) of the Statistics Act to facilitate this data sharing.

https://www.cso.ie/en/aboutus/lgdp/legislation/memorandumsofunderstanding/csoteagasc/

Who uses the results?

Teagasc use the sample provided by the CSO to carry out their National Farm Survey. The results of the Teagasc survey are used by the EU Commission, government departments, private organisations, and the public.

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

Information is shared between the CSO and Teagasc under Section 11(1) of the Statistics Act for statistical purposes only. All information supplied to the CSO and shared with Teagasc is treated as strictly confidential. The Statistics Act, 1993 sets stringent confidentiality standards.

All information provided by the CSO or collected by Teagasc for the NFS will be subject to the terms or Sections 32 and 33 of the Statistics Act, 1993. The information may only be used for statistical purposes and it must be treated as strictly confidential. The surveys may not include any non-statistical purposes or uses of the sample provided by the CSO or the data collected by Teagasc. Statistical confidentiality and data protection must be respected at every step of survey processing. All results tables must be subject to statistical disclosure control, to ensure that confidential data on individual farms is not identifiable from the results.

All staff of Teagasc assigned to work on such joint projects must be appointed as Officers of Statistics under Section 20(b) of the Statistics Act and must sign the Declaration of Secrecy set out in Section 21 of the Act.

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

The CSO uses administrative data provided by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Basic Payment Scheme, Animal Identification and Movement System, Sheep and Goat Census, Corporate Client System) and its own survey data to maintain a register of farms in Ireland. This register is used to generate samples for CSO surveys and Teagasc’s National Farm Survey.

A data file with farmer name, farm address, farm size and farm type is provided annually by the CSO in encrypted format by secure transfer to Teagasc. Teagasc then visits each selected farm and collect accountancy details as part of the National Farm Survey’.

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

Sophie Emerson, Agriculture Surveys Section, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E. Tel +353 (21) 4535364 or E-mail agri@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: