Status at 24 August 2026: analytics are not yet switched on, so browsing this site sets no analytics cookies at all. When they are switched on, the consent banner described below will appear, and nothing will be set unless you accept it. This policy sits alongside our privacy policy and explains the cookie side in detail.
A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to keep. It can be read again when you return, which is how a site recognises a returning visitor or remembers a setting. Related technologies — local storage, pixels, tags — do similar things by different means, and where we use any of them we say so here.
Nothing optional runs until you say yes. We do not load analytics, and we set no analytics cookies, before you have accepted them — the tag is not placed on the page at all until you do. We use no advertising cookies, no social media tracking pixels, and nothing that follows you to other websites. We do not sell or share your data with data brokers.
These are the only things that may be set without asking, because the site cannot be served securely without them. They do not track you between websites and are not used for advertising.
Hosting and delivery — our host, Webflow, may set a cookie to serve pages correctly and to protect the site from abuse.
Spam protection on forms — pages carrying a form, such as Send Us Your News, use Cloudflare Turnstile to tell a person from a bot. It may set a short-lived cookie when you interact with a form. Without it the forms would fill with spam.
We want to know which articles people actually read, so we can write more of what works and stop wasting your time with what does not. For that we use Google Analytics 4. If you accept, it sets cookies beginning _ga, which distinguish one browser from another and measure how long a page was read. They typically last up to two years, and you can delete them at any time.
We have IP anonymisation switched on, so your address is truncated before it is stored. Google acts as our processor for this data and may transfer it outside the European Economic Area under the safeguards described in our privacy policy. If you decline, none of this loads and we simply do not know you were here.
Your answer is kept in your browser's local storage under the name me-cookie-consent, holding a single word: yes or no. It is not a cookie, it is never sent to us or to anyone else, and it stays on the device you used. Clearing your browser data removes it, and the banner will ask again.
You can withdraw consent as easily as you gave it. Use the Cookie settings link in the footer of any page and the banner returns, with both answers exactly as available as they were the first time. Declining after previously accepting stops any further collection; to remove data already collected, write to us and we will action it.
You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and every major browser lets you refuse them entirely. Blocking the strictly necessary ones may stop our forms working, but the articles will read perfectly well.
No advertising or retargeting cookies.
No Meta, TikTok or other social media tracking pixels.
No session recording, heat mapping or scroll tracking.
No selling or sharing of personal data with data brokers.
One exception worth naming: some articles embed videos from TikTok. Those load from TikTok's own servers, and TikTok may set its own cookies once an embed appears, under its policies rather than ours. If that concerns you, blocking third-party cookies in your browser prevents it, and the rest of the article is unaffected.
If we add anything that sets a cookie, this page is updated before it goes live and the date at the top changes. If you think we have handled your data badly, tell us first — and if we do not put it right, you have the right to complain to the Data Protection Commission in Ireland.
Read the full privacy policy →