Terms of Service

Giraft is a service operated by Ark Innovative Technologies & Services Limited, trading as Ark HQ, a company registered in Ireland (company number 600940, registered office Cube Building, Monahan Road, Cork, Ireland). In these terms "we", "us" and "our" mean Ark Innovative Technologies & Services Limited, and "Giraft" or "the Service" means the Giraft application, website and related features.

These terms form a binding agreement between us and the school, board of management, education and training board, patron body or other organisation using the Service ("the School", "you", "your"). By creating an account, accepting an invitation, or using the Service, you agree to these terms.

If you do not agree to these terms, do not use the Service.

Giraft helps a school draft, review, approve, publish and evidence its policies. It maps the policies a school is required to hold, drafts text grounded in Irish education law and departmental guidance, runs consultation and board-approval workflows, tracks staff acknowledgement, and publishes approved policies to a public portal.

The School remains solely responsible for the content, legal validity, adoption and publication of its policies. Every policy should be read, amended as your school requires, and approved through your own governance process before it is relied on. Where a policy carries statutory obligations, you should take your own professional advice.

Your policies are your own. Before your public policies page opens, and for as long as you use Giraft:

(a) Review

You review every policy held in your Giraft dashboard, including its content, formatting and presentation, and approve each policy as it appears before publishing it.

(b) Current versions

The policy documents you give us to upload are your most recent versions ratified by your board of management or other management authority, including an education and training board ("the Board"). Where a more recent version exists that you did not supply, you are responsible for identifying and uploading it.

(c) Completeness

You check your Giraft dashboard against your own records. You raise with us any policy you supplied that is missing, so that it is resolved before your public policies page opens.

(d) Dates

You confirm, and enter or correct where needed, the ratification date and next review date on each policy, so that they reflect the decisions of the Board.

(e) Publication

Publishing a policy is your action alone. We do not publish policies on your behalf, and a policy is not on your public page until you publish it.

(f) Policies required by law

Where a policy you are required by law to hold is not in Giraft, responsibility for it remains with you. Examples are policies required under the Education Act 1998, the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018, the Children First Act 2015 and the Child Protection Procedures for Schools 2025, the Bí Cineálta procedures, the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, and data protection law. You can create such a policy with Giraft or upload it, and can ask us for help.

(g) Keeping policies current

Reviewing policies on their statutory or scheduled cycle, updating them when the law or your circumstances change, ratifying revisions and publishing updated versions remain your responsibility. Giraft shows which policies are missing, in draft or due for review, and you can act on them yourself.

(h) Support

We provide onboarding and ongoing support and will raise with you matters we notice. You are responsible for asking us for help when you need it.

(i) Who does what

You own, ratify, review, approve, publish and maintain your policies; are responsible for their legal accuracy, currency and completeness; and are the data controller for your own documents and records. We provide the Giraft platform, document processing, onboarding, dashboard indicators, training materials and support. We do not give legal advice, do not ratify or approve policies, do not publish policies on your behalf, and do not take on your statutory duties, which remain with you at all times.

(j) Legal basis

Under section 15 of the Education Act 1998 the Board manages the school on behalf of the patron. Your statutory policy duties rest with the Board and cannot be transferred to a service provider. They include the Child Safeguarding Statement under section 11 of the Children First Act 2015, the code of behaviour under the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, the admission policy under the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 and the safety statement under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. Nothing in Giraft or in this agreement moves them to us.

(k) Go-live confirmation

Before your public policies page opens, your principal confirms in Giraft, on your behalf, that you have reviewed your policies, are happy for them to be published and accept the responsibilities in this section. We keep that confirmation, with the principal's name, email address and the time, as a record.

Parts of the Service use large language models to draft policy text, re-read documents you upload, suggest edits and answer questions about a policy. These are useful tools, but they are not infallible.

• •Generated text may contain errors, omissions or statements that do not reflect current law, and may cite or paraphrase source material inaccurately.
• •Generated text is a starting draft for your review — never a finished policy, and never a substitute for your own judgement or professional advice.
• •Where the Service reads an uploaded document, the extracted structure and text may be imperfect. You should check that an uploaded policy has been read correctly before relying on it.
• •Answers given by the question-and-answer feature describe what a policy document appears to say. They are not advice on what the law requires of you.

You are responsible for reviewing all generated content before adopting, publishing or acting on it. Some policy types are assembled from official departmental templates rather than generated; where that is the case the Service says so, but your obligation to review remains the same.

If you accept these terms on behalf of a school or other organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to bind that organisation to them. Where a board of management or equivalent body holds that authority, you confirm you have its authorisation.

The account and all data in it belong to the School, not to the individual who created it. Where a person leaves the School, the School may ask us to transfer administrative control of the account.

An administrator of the School may invite colleagues and assign them roles. Roles determine what a user may do — for example, only an administrator may approve, publish or archive a policy.

Some features work by sending a link by email — single-use for staff acknowledgements and invitations, time-limited for board votes, and shared with the audience you choose for consultation reviews. Anyone holding such a link can use it for its purpose until it expires, is used, or the round closes. You are responsible for the accuracy of the email addresses you enter and for telling us promptly if you believe a link or account has been misused.

You must keep account credentials secure and must not share a login between people.

We offer a free preview that drafts a sample policy before you create an account, a free trial limited to a small number of policies, and time-limited demonstration accounts set up for a school by our team.

These are provided for evaluation, as-is and without any warranty or commitment as to availability. Content produced in a preview, trial or demonstration account should not be adopted or published as a school policy without full review. We may withdraw, limit or expire these at any time, and demonstration accounts and their contents are deleted after the period stated when the account is created.

The free preview is protected by anti-abuse measures, including rate limits and a challenge. You must not attempt to circumvent them.

Where the School subscribes to a paid plan, the fee, term and payment method are those set out at the point of purchase or in a signed Terms of Engagement. Unless stated otherwise, a licence runs for twelve (12) months from its start date.

• •Invoiced subscriptions are payable within thirty (30) days of the invoice date.
• •Card subscriptions are charged at the start of each term through our payment processor.
• •Fees are stated exclusive of VAT, which is added at the prevailing Irish rate.
• •A licence renews automatically at the end of each term unless either party gives written notice of non-renewal at least thirty (30) days before the renewal date.
• •We will give at least sixty (60) days' notice before any change to renewal fees takes effect.

If an invoice remains unpaid after it falls due we may suspend the Service after giving you reasonable written notice and an opportunity to pay. Suspension does not delete your data.

Everything the School puts into the Service or produces with it — uploaded documents, policy text, comments, school details and records — is "School Content". As between us and the School, the School owns all School Content.

You grant us a limited licence to host, copy, transmit, display and process School Content strictly in order to provide and support the Service, and to comply with law. That licence ends when the content is deleted or the agreement ends, except for backups held for the period described in the Privacy Policy.

We do not use School Content to train artificial-intelligence models, and our model providers do not train on data submitted through their APIs.

You confirm you have the right to upload the content you upload, and that doing so does not infringe anyone else's rights.

You must not:

• •Use the Service unlawfully, or to store or distribute unlawful material.
• •Upload personal data you have no lawful basis to share with us — in particular, do not upload student records, special category data or child protection records where the policy work does not require it.
• •Attempt to access another school's data, or probe, scan or test the security of the Service without our written permission.
• •Circumvent rate limits, usage limits, anti-abuse challenges or access controls.
• •Resell, sublicense or make the Service available to any organisation other than the School, unless we have agreed in writing.
• •Use the Service to build a competing product, or scrape it at scale by automated means.
• •Upload malicious code, or anything designed to disrupt the Service.

We may suspend access immediately where we reasonably believe there is a serious breach of this clause, a security risk, or a legal requirement to do so. We will tell you why as soon as we reasonably can.

We work to keep the Service available and to fix faults promptly, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation. Maintenance, third-party outages and factors outside our control can all interrupt service.

Support is provided by email to hello@giraft.ai during Irish business hours. Where a signed Terms of Engagement sets out specific service or support commitments, those apply instead of this clause.

We may change, improve or withdraw individual features. Where a change materially reduces the core functionality of a paid subscription, we will give you reasonable notice and you may terminate and receive a pro-rata refund for the unused part of your term.

In respect of personal data within School Content, the School is the controller and we are the processor. Our Data Processing Agreement — standard contractual clauses under Article 28(7) GDPR with their Annexes — sets out how we handle that data, who our sub-processors are, and what we commit to. It forms part of these terms and, where the two conflict, its Clauses prevail.

In respect of the account, billing and usage data we hold to run our own business, we are the controller. Our Privacy Policy explains that processing.

Both documents are available at giraft.ai/legal.

Each party may receive information from the other that is confidential. Each will keep the other's confidential information in confidence, use it only for the purposes of this agreement, and disclose it only to people who need it and are under equivalent obligations.

This does not apply to information that is public through no fault of the receiving party, was already lawfully held, or must be disclosed by law — in which case the disclosing party will be told first, where it is lawful to do so.

We will not name your school as a customer in marketing without your prior written agreement.

We own the Service — its software, design, content libraries, templates and branding — and all intellectual property in it. Nothing in these terms transfers any of that to you. We grant the School a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service during the term.

The School owns its finished policies and may use, adapt, publish and distribute them freely, including after this agreement ends.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them to improve the Service without any obligation to you.

These terms apply for as long as you use the Service. Either party may terminate a paid subscription by giving notice of non-renewal as described above, or immediately if the other party commits a material breach that is not remedied within thirty (30) days of written notice, or becomes insolvent.

On termination your right to use the Service ends. You may export your policies before termination takes effect, and we will make School Content available for export for thirty (30) days afterwards on request. After that, School Content is deleted in line with the Data Processing Agreement.

Clauses that by their nature should survive termination — including confidentiality, intellectual property, liability and governing law — continue to apply.

We warrant that we will provide the Service with reasonable care and skill. Except as expressly stated, and to the fullest extent the law allows, the Service is provided without further warranties of any kind, including any warranty that generated content is accurate, complete or legally sufficient.

Neither party excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Subject to that, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of goodwill, or loss arising from a regulatory finding, inspection outcome or third-party claim relating to the content of a policy the School adopted.

We may update these terms — for example to reflect a change in the Service or in the law. Each version is dated, and the current version is always published at giraft.ai/legal/terms.

Where a change materially affects your rights we will give at least thirty (30) days' notice by email to the School's administrators before it takes effect. If you do not accept the change you may terminate before it takes effect and receive a pro-rata refund for the unused part of your term. Continuing to use the Service after that date means you accept the new terms.

Where the School has signed a proposal with us, the Ark HQ Terms of Service it accepted by signing (published at hq.thearkhq.com/terms) take precedence over these terms to the extent of any conflict, and these terms apply to everything they do not cover. Otherwise these terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Data Processing Agreement, are the entire agreement between us.

Neither party may assign this agreement without the other's written consent, except to a group company or on a sale of the business. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it. Nothing in this agreement creates a partnership, joint venture or agency between us.

This agreement and any dispute arising out of it are governed by the laws of Ireland, and the courts of Ireland have exclusive jurisdiction.

Questions about these terms can be sent to hello@giraft.ai. Data protection questions can be sent to privacy@giraft.ai. Suspected security issues should be reported to security@giraft.ai.