Any landline telephone subscriber has a right to ask his/her service provider for a copy of his/her listing in the National Directory Database. The service provider has a right to charge a fee for this service.

Under the ePrivacy Regulations (SI 336 of 2011) marketing calls to mobile phones are prohibited unless:

1. The caller has been notified by the subscriber or user that he or she consents to the receipt of such calls on his or her mobile telephone, or

2. The subscriber or user has consented generally to receiving marketing calls and that such consent to receive marketing calls is recorded in the National Directory Database in respect of his or her mobile telephone number.

This is a matter for your phone provider and the Gardaí to examine. Your data protection rights relate to calls for direct marketing purposes. If there are subsequent concerns in relation to the manner that your phone number became known to the person making the calls then there may be a data protection issue that this office can pursue.

Unsolicited direct marketing mail can be stopped by sending back an opt-out request to the sender. A description of how to do this should have been provided with the communication received. Your preference not to receive further marketing mail must then be respected by the marketer. If you have concerns as to where your contact information was sourced by the marketer in the first instance, you should seek an explanation from the marketer concerned.  

The ePrivacy Regulations provide that individuals have the right to object to receiving electronic direct marketing and that a valid address to opt-out must be included with each marketing communication.

The general rule for electronic direct marketing is that it requires the clear, affirmative consent of the recipient (such as by specifically opting-in) under Regulation 13 of the ePrivacy Regulations.

Nevertheless, consent is not specifically required in respect of every instance of electronic direct marketing, and there is an exception to the general requirement for consent, but only in cases involving existing customers, where certain other conditions are also met.

Unsolicited communication is essentially something that was not sought or requested. If, for example, you have an ongoing, or recent, relationship with a business, then contact from that business might not be deemed unsolicited, as some form of consent may be present. In addition, where you have volunteered contact details in the course of completing lifestyle surveys or entering promotions, such details may have consent attached to their future use and subsequent contact may not be deemed to be unsolicited depending on what you knew and consented to when you provided them. 

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies directly in Ireland to most kinds of data processing and is read in conjunction with the Data Protection Act 2018. However, in addition to these general rules, there are rules which specifically apply to electronic direct marketing (marketing conducted by phone, fax, text message and email) which are set out in the ePrivacy Regulations (SI 336 of 2011). 

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) will attempt to facilitate a suspension of the examination. It may sometimes be best for the data subject to consider withdrawing the complaint and to raise the matter again when they are able to actively participate in the examination.

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) examines all complaints to the extent appropriate depending on the circumstances of the complaint. However, if following that examination your complaint was rejected or dismissed you can appeal this.

If you were provided with advice, or if recommendations were made to the data controller and if you remain dissatisfied with this, you can make an application to the courts under section 117 of the Data Protection Act, 2018.