This website uses Google Analytics to analyse how visitors use our website. These cookies give us information about visitor numbers, website traffic, pages of interest etc. This is so that we can improve our website design and functionality, to develop our website based on users’ interests, and to ensure our website displays correctly. The information collected by Google Analytics includes: IP address from which you access our website, the type of browser you used to visit the website, the operating system used, the top-level domain name used (eg. .ie, .co.uk, etc), the date and time of the visit, pages visited etc. This information is transferred outside the EEA based on the EU-US Privacy Shield. You can find out more information at: www.https://support.google.com/analytics.answer/6004245 The name of the cookies, their function, and their retention periods are set out below:
Google Analytic Cookie Name Expiration/retention period Function
_ga 12 months from last visit Used to distinguish visitors to this website.
_gat 10 minutes Used to throttle request rate
_utmt 10 minutes
Used to throttle request rate
_ _utma 12 months from last visit Used to distinguish visitors and pages visited. Records a unique ID, the date and time of first visit, time of current visit and total number of visits made
_ _utmb 30 minutes from last visit Used to determine new sessions or visits. Stores the number of page views in current visit and start time of visit
_ _ utmc Session cookie Used to note that the visit has ended when browser is closed
_ _utmz 6 months Records the site you may have linked to our page from. Only records data if you clicked on a link to our site from a different website
We are also using Twitter and Facebook features to add more social presence to our website. These providers are also using cookies through our website.
Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.
Sr Kathleen O’Riordan 
Sr Margaret O’Sullivan