Technical audit · 31.05.2026

cso.ie

Central Statistics Office of Ireland

A government statistics agency — the body one would expect to understand data better than anyone. HAR: 122 requests, 11 domains. Google Tag Manager loads prior to consent. Seven external CDNs are not mentioned in the privacy policy. Seven of eight external services are American companies.

Request timeline

+125 ms · before the banner
code.highcharts.com, cdn.jsdelivr.net, cdn.datatables.net, code.jquery.com — external CDNs begin loading simultaneously with the site's own resources.
+126 ms · before the banner
www.googletagmanager.com (G-M5K0ZBH6F8) and cdnjs.cloudflare.com — GTM loads immediately, without waiting for consent.
+154–264 ms · before the banner
fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com — Google Fonts loads two font families (Roboto Slab, Roboto), transmitting the user's IP address to Google's servers.
The banner — cookieconsent2
The cookieconsent2 v3.1.1 library loads from cdnjs.cloudflare.com. The banner offers to accept or decline Google Analytics. The other eight external domains are not mentioned.
Set-Cookie — zero
None of the 122 requests sets a cookie via Set-Cookie. Cookies are also absent from outgoing requests. GTM is loaded, but no cookies are recorded in the HAR.

Declared versus actual

✓ Google Analytics — mentioned in the privacy policy — declared
✓ Highcharts (__cfduid) — mentioned in the privacy policy — declared
+ jsDelivr (cdn.jsdelivr.net) — not mentioned — not declared
+ cdnjs.cloudflare.com — not mentioned — not declared
+ code.jquery.com — not mentioned — not declared
+ maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com — not mentioned — not declared
+ cdn.datatables.net — not mentioned — not declared
+ cdn.cso.ie — not mentioned — not declared
+ fonts.googleapis.com / fonts.gstatic.com — not mentioned — not declared

Transfer timings

+125 ms code.highcharts.com

Highcharts 9.3.3 — a charting library. USA.

+126 ms cdn.jsdelivr.net

jsDelivr — 46 requests. An open-source library CDN.

+126 ms www.googletagmanager.com

GTM with ID G-M5K0ZBH6F8. USA.

+126 ms cdnjs.cloudflare.com

Cloudflare CDN — cookieconsent2.

+127 ms code.jquery.com

jQuery CDN. USA.

+128 ms cdn.datatables.net

DataTables CDN — 7 requests.

+153 ms maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com

BootstrapCDN. Font Awesome 4.7.0.

+154 ms fonts.googleapis.com

Google Fonts — Roboto Slab + Roboto. USA.

+264 ms fonts.gstatic.com

Google Fonts font files. USA.

Detected trackers

Indicators of GDPR non-compliance

Context

The CSO (Central Statistics Office) is Ireland’s state body responsible for collecting, processing, and publishing official statistics, based in Cork. HAR: 122 requests, 11 domains. Of these, 53 requests go to the first-party domain www.cso.ie, 2 to cdn.cso.ie, and 67 to nine external domains, seven of which are American.

At the +126 ms mark, before any user interaction with the banner, www.googletagmanager.com loads with the ID G-M5K0ZBH6F8. GTM is a container: depending on tag configuration, it can activate Google Analytics, remarketing pixels, and other scripts. The fact that GTM loads prior to consent means the user’s IP address is transmitted to Google’s servers in the USA without a legal basis under GDPR Art. 6(1).

At +154 ms — fonts.googleapis.com; at +264 ms — fonts.gstatic.com. Two font families load: Roboto Slab and Roboto. Each request to Google’s servers transmits the visitor’s IP address. Since the Munich court ruling (2022) and subsequent positions taken by German and Austrian supervisory authorities, connecting to Google Fonts without consent and without local hosting has been treated as a violation of Art. 6(1). Both fonts can be hosted locally — there is no technical obstacle to doing so.

Seven external CDNs outside the policy

The CSO’s privacy policy names exactly two data recipients: Google Analytics and Highcharts (with an explanation of Cloudflare’s __cfduid cookie). Seven other external domains — jsDelivr, cdnjs.cloudflare.com, code.jquery.com, maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com, cdn.datatables.net, fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com — are not mentioned in the policy. Under Art. 13(1)(e), the data subject must be informed of all recipients or categories of recipients of their data. Seven unmentioned domains means seven unnamed recipients.

An architectural choice

46 requests to jsDelivr load a visualization stack: Chart.js, Leaflet, Highcharts, PapaParse, Turf.js, Moment.js, Esri Leaflet, and the CSO’s own PxWidget. These libraries power interactive infographics and maps — functionality genuinely needed on pages featuring visualizations. Loading them on the home page means that every visitor, including those who arrived simply for news or contact information, leaves a trace in the logs of nine external servers. Technically, this is a matter of lazy loading: the libraries could be included only on the pages where they are actually used.

Despite all this external loading, none of the 122 requests in the HAR sets a cookie via Set-Cookie. Cookies are also absent from outgoing requests. GTM is loaded, but no cookies are recorded in the HAR — possibly because blocking is implemented at the GTM configuration level. This partially softens the picture, but does not eliminate the fact that external resources load prior to consent.

Conclusion

The CSO is a government body that works with data as its core function. The privacy policy was drafted in 2020 and does not reflect the site’s actual set of external dependencies: of nine external domains, two are mentioned. Google Tag Manager loads prior to consent. Google Fonts transmits IP addresses to servers in the USA without consent. Cookies, meanwhile, are not set — a fact worth recording. Fixing this requires three steps: move GTM behind the consent banner, host fonts locally, and update the privacy policy with a complete list of recipients.

Evidence

How to verify: download the file and compute its checksum — sha256sum file.har (Linux, macOS) or certutil -hashfile file.har SHA256 (Windows); it must match the one shown. The conclusions apply to the scope of this measurement — see the limitations of the method.

Original (audit)
HAR file: ie/cso-ie-2026-05-31.har
SHA-256: 3564c7d61ac788dbdf41e4d18efd8bcb56c949bead9106fec9a2607871fc5d42
Re-check snapshot
Awaiting changes
HAR files are stored on EU infrastructure (Proton Drive). SHA-256 is published for integrity verification.