Garret Ahearn
The measure only exists where this member actually spoke in the debate their vote belongs to, and where that vote can be tied to a specific question. Both cuts are steep.
| Votes cast | 506 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 91 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 44 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 6 |
The third row is the sharpest cut. A committee-stage sitting can hold fifteen divisions while its speeches discuss forty-two numbered amendments, and the record does not say which amendment each division was. Those votes are counted here and deliberately left unscored rather than guessed.
The same scorable votes, split by whether the member went with their party. The top-right cell is the one worth reading: a stated position reversed while following the party line.
| Voted with own party | Voted against own party | |
|---|---|---|
| Matched their words | 3 | 0 |
| Contradicted their words | 3 | 0 |
Not scored: 47 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 0 where no clear position was stated in the debate.
Every case the pipeline flagged, with the contribution it read and the vote as recorded. Judge them yourself — that is the point of showing them rather than only the rate.
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I support the Minister of State in how she outlined her concerns. While I agree that there is a stigma attached to it, many organisations, including Shine and SeaChange, have done a lot of good work in trying to break that stigma in mental health. Most of the contributions on this amendment have been about the most vulnerable, and people who are suffering from mental health conditions are vulnerable. When the Ministe…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I would like to discuss sport. Does the Deputy Leader agree that sport can play a huge part in helping communities and organisations throughout the country to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic in the coming months and years? Does the Deputy Leader agree that the €70 million that was ring-fenced for support for all sports clubs throughout the country during the summer months was very welcome? I note also that the €20 …
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.80) · voted TA · with their party
The Order of Business is No. 1, motion regarding Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2022 (Section 9(2)) (Amount of Financial Contribution) Order 2025 (Revocation) Order 2026, to be taken on the conclusion of the Order of Business without debate; No. 2, motion regarding Planning and Development (Exempted Development (Act of 2000)) Regulations 2026, back from committee, to be taken on conclusion of No. 1 without …
Valence runs −1 (negative) to +1 (positive). This is a separate measure from alignment above and says nothing about how anyone voted — "the Minister has been asleep at the wheel" is strongly negative and carries no position on the question.
| Model | Speeches scored | Mean valence | Corpus mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| vader | 691 | +0.583 | +0.423 |
Mean tone by topic, most negative first. Topics come from an LDA model fitted over debate contributions; the terms are the model's, the labels are hand-assigned.
| Topic | Speeches | Mean valence |
|---|---|---|
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 27 | +0.239 |
| War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish | 13 | +0.271 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 6 | +0.308 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 12 | +0.362 |
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 24 | +0.376 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 17 | +0.543 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 26 | +0.584 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 56 | +0.671 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 36 | +0.676 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 269 | +0.679 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 47 | +0.683 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 20 | +0.735 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 36 | +0.739 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 43 | +0.746 |
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 18 | +0.820 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 23 | +0.830 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 24 | +0.855 |
Contributions whose tone sits more than two standard deviations from this member's own average. Baselines are per member on purpose — an absolute threshold would just rank people by temperament.
I support the Minister of State in how she outlined her concerns. While I agree that there is a stigma attached to it, many organisations, including Shine and SeaChange, have done a lot of good work in trying to break that stigma in mental health. Most of the …
I agree with many of the comments Senator Dooley made. The Cathaoirleach will agree with me in wishing more people had seen the game, as they would have seen that Tipperary should have won it and not thrown it away in the last five minutes. I ask for a debate …
Hyperemesis is a condition that one in ten women suffer from during pregnancy. It is a condition that became quite commonly known from Kate Middleton's pregnancy. It is a condition that women suffer from involving severe nausea and vomiting to the extreme leve…
That is true. The Senator spoke about Serca Darcy. As public representatives, unfortunately we all know of people who get very sick due to breast cancer or other long-term illnesses, look for supports and do not know where to go. All of us advise people in our…
The Order of Business is No. 1, Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Bill 2025 – Second Stage, to be taken at 4.45 p.m. and to conclude no later than 6 p.m., with the time allocated to the opening remarks of the Minister not to exceed eight minutes, all…
You would know that there was a poll at the weekend. Every time Sinn Féin slides, the only thing it seems to think it can talk about is housing. Yet, every time they talk about housing after a polling collapse, they make another blunder of some kind. What I he…
Through the Chair, I actually welcome the interruption. The Senator said it would be because it would increase the price of housing. I do not agree with her but let us say she is right. Let us take an example of a house in Clonmel that costs €300,000 where som…
-----but this is important to say because people on the ground know this. The level of violence that has happened has to be condemned but that will not stop. There is a community and there are neighbours there who are willing to do that and more, if things do …
When we talk about decision-making, one of the faults of the European Union is the speed of decision-making. I just came back this morning from the World Forum in Berlin where I spoke on defence and security and what allied countries can do to support Ukraine …
This is what people ask me all of the time: how can it be that when the wholesale prices go up, the bills go up straight away, but we are told by Electric Ireland that when wholesale prices come down, and they are now lower than they were before the war, it ca…
The Order of Business is No. 1, motion regarding the proposed approval by Seanad Éireann of the Data Protection Act 2018, section 60(6) and section 51(3) regulations 2026, to be taken on conclusion of the Order of Business without debate; No. 2, motion regardi…
When one talks about common sense, I ask Members to wait until they hear this one. Funeral directors in Cashel, County Tipperary, received a letter from Tipperary County Council last week, stating that the payment for funerals must be made before the burial ta…
Alignment by the party a member sat for on the day, with 95% Wilson intervals. This is the test the measure could have failed.
| Party | Aligned | 95% CI | n |
|---|---|---|---|
| PBP | 82.5% | 68–91% | 40 |
| LAB | 78.2% | 69–85% | 101 |
| IND | 76.5% | 72–81% | 327 |
| SF | 75.8% | 69–81% | 198 |
| SD | 71.4% | 58–82% | 49 |
| FG | 69.1% | 62–76% | 162 |
| FF | 67.9% | 60–75% | 165 |
| GP | 56.8% | 41–71% | 37 |
Members of government parties align their stated position with their vote 9.4 points less often than Independents — bootstrap 95% CI [+2.7, +16.0], which excludes zero. Opposition parties sit 9.5 points above government too, CI [+3.1, +15.9]. Independents and opposition members are indistinguishable from each other (−0.0 points, CI [−6.3, +6.2]). So the gap does not come from having no party; it comes from being in government, which is what a whip effect should look like. Read this as the measure behaving sensibly, not as a finding about any individual.
Two automated methods were built and both failed. What survives is the rule-based layer, which is why the coverage above is narrow.
| Method | Accuracy | 95% CI | n |
|---|---|---|---|
| nli-vs-mover-anchor:deberta | 35.9% | 29–42% | 234 |
| nli-vs-mover-anchor:distilroberta | 11.5% | 8–16% | 234 |
Zero-shot entailment was asked to judge contributions whose true position is known — the member moved the amendment, so the answer is support by construction — and got it right 11.5% of the time, returning "unclear" or "oppose" for nearly everything. A classifier trained on the rule-labelled cases over the corpus embeddings reached 71.1% against a 65.3% majority-class baseline: better than chance, not better enough. Both are excluded from every figure on this page. Only the rule-based cascade, which is exact where it fires and silent where it does not, is used.
Position is read from the member's own contributions in the debate section the division belongs to, by a three-step cascade: an explicit move of the question ("I move amendment No. 5", true by construction); declarative stance phrases ordered so negations are tested first, because "I cannot support" and "I do not oppose" both defeat a naive keyword match; and, where neither fires, a zero-shot entailment model judging the contribution against the question put. Tone uses a separate model and is reported separately. Agreement against hand-labelled cases, with bootstrap intervals, is on the evidence page; no score here should be read without it.