Cookies
Cookie policy
Which cookies this website sets, which are strictly necessary, and how consent works under the Irish ePrivacy Regulations.
Our position on cookies
This website is built to work without tracking you. There is no advertising network, no social media pixel and no profile being assembled about your browsing. That is a design decision, not a temporary state.
It also means that, as published, this site does not need to interrupt you with a consent banner before you can read a page, because it does not set non-essential cookies.
What a cookie actually is
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store. Some are essential for a site to function at all. Others exist to measure behaviour or to target advertising, and those are the ones the law treats differently.
Which cookies this website sets
Strictly necessary
- A security token when you submit the contact form, which protects the form against abuse. It is short-lived and identifies the request, not you.
- WordPress session and login cookies, which only apply if you administer this website. Ordinary visitors never receive them.
- A comment cookie, only if you choose to leave a comment on a guide and ask the browser to remember your details.
Analytics and advertising
None as published. If analytics are added in future, they will be listed here by name and purpose, and consent will be requested before any such cookie is set.
Third-party services
The WhatsApp links on this site are ordinary links. They do not track you while you are here. When you click one, you leave for WhatsApp and their own terms and privacy policy apply from that point.
Typefaces on this site are requested from Google Fonts, which means your browser makes a request to Google's servers to fetch the font files. That request does not set an advertising cookie, but it does involve your IP address being visible to that service in the ordinary course of loading a file.
Consent and the law in Ireland
Cookies in Ireland are governed by the ePrivacy Regulations 2011, read alongside the GDPR, and are supervised by the Data Protection Commission. The rule in practice is simple: cookies that are strictly necessary to deliver a service the user asked for do not need consent, and everything else does.
Consent must be freely given and specific. Pre-ticked boxes, banners that only offer "accept", and implied consent from continuing to scroll do not meet that standard. If we ever add a banner to this site, it will offer a genuine choice to decline.
Controlling cookies yourself
Every major browser lets you view, block and delete cookies from its settings, usually under privacy or site data. Blocking all cookies will break the contact form on this site, because the security token is a cookie, but the rest of the site will read perfectly well.
If this changes
This page is updated whenever what the site sets changes, and the date at the top reflects the last revision. If we introduce anything that requires consent, you will be asked before it loads rather than told about it afterwards.
How we handle personal data more generally is described in our privacy policy.
This page describes the website as it is published today. Adding any analytics or advertising tool changes what is required here, so update this page at the same time you add the tool, not afterwards.