Guide

GDPR basics for small Irish businesses

If you hold customer names, numbers, addresses or photos of their homes, data protection rules apply to you the same as to a large company. The practical requirements for a small trade business are manageable once you know what they are. This is general information and not legal advice.

What counts as personal data

Anything that identifies a person. Names, phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, photos of their property, notes about a job at their house.

That means your enquiry inbox, your quotes and your phone contacts are all in scope.

The practical duties

For a small firm these are the ones that matter day to day.

  • Only collect what you need for the job
  • Tell people what you do with it, usually in a privacy policy
  • Keep it somewhere reasonably secure
  • Do not keep it forever with no reason
  • Let people see or delete their data if they ask

Marketing needs consent

Contacting a customer about a job they booked is fine. Sending them offers later is marketing and you need their agreement for that, recorded at the time.

A simple tick box on your form, with a note of when they ticked it, covers most situations.

Websites and forms

Your site needs a privacy policy that says what the form collects and why, and cookie information where relevant. Enquiries should go somewhere proper rather than only living in one inbox on one phone.

Every site we build comes with the policy pages, a consent record on the forms and the enquiries stored securely.

If something goes wrong

A lost laptop or a wrong email with customer details is a data breach. There are timelines for reporting serious ones, so know who you would ring before it happens.

Common questions

Does GDPR apply to a one man business?

Yes. The rules apply based on handling personal data, not on the size of the business.

Do I need a privacy policy on my website?

If your site collects any personal information, including through a contact form, then yes.

Where to go next

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