James O'Connor
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 | 1,015 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 12 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 8 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 0 |
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 | 1 | 0 |
| Contradicted their words | 5 | 0 |
Not scored: 4 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 2 where no clear position was stated in the debate.
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 | 379 | +0.609 | +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 |
|---|---|---|
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 7 | +0.475 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 46 | +0.492 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 5 | +0.525 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 13 | +0.540 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 26 | +0.559 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 24 | +0.586 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 10 | +0.600 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 21 | +0.675 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 8 | +0.691 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 15 | +0.704 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 14 | +0.789 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 9 | +0.823 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 15 | +0.873 |
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 raise the issue of the Covid sick pay scheme that was in place for healthcare workers who, unfortunately, suffered from the serious consequences of long Covid. I met with these workers in my office recently. They are two nurses who have been out sick since t…
The Government is aware of the enormous damage done in my constituency last October by Storm Babet. Residential homes, businesses and public infrastructure were very heavily damaged, with the cost of road damage alone estimated to be approximately €50 million,…
I raise the issue of the N25 corridor between Midleton and Youghal. The Taoiseach will be familiar with this given I have been raising it since my election to the Dáil. It is a key issue for me. Unfortunately, there have been a number of major fatal accidents …
The decision this week by Bank of Ireland came as a major shock to people around the country, particularly in my constituency, where three bank branches in major towns will close. The decision will impact my own area of Youghal. Cobh will see the closure of a …
I thank the Minister for his comprehensive answer. I will certainly work alongside him to continue to tackle these issues. However, the reality with Irish Water and its treatment of my constituents in Cork East is that Mitchelstown is listed on the capital pla…
I thank the Minister of State for his reply. However, the reply given in the House this morning makes no reference to the location affected. Considering that the location is in the title of the question asked, that is not acceptable. I ask the Minister of Stat…
This topic is perhaps one of the most difficult issues that has arisen during our current Dáil term, outside of the pandemic. Unfortunately, as a backbench Government TD, it has been very challenging to deal with as regards our constituents. The public percept…
I have a couple of additional points based on observations I made on my community in the weeks since this crisis began. Throughout rural Ireland, we see families, including young mothers and children, arriving. We need to do more to find suitable accommodation…
I want to ask about the release of emergency funding. The Government will be familiar from Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, and indeed from the six members of the Cabinet who visited areas in Cork in recent days, of the utter devastation that has been caused by flas…
I acknowledge the extraordinary effort and work that has been put in at all levels of our health service. I am sure the Ministers of State will join me in paying tribute to those who have been working on the front line of the Covid-19 situation in our hospital…
I refer to what has been said by my colleagues and I refer to the DUP and its ongoing opposition to progress when it comes to the Windsor Framework. Have the Department or the Minister explained to the DUP the potential damage this could do, not alone to its r…
I wish to raise an issue that is very important to people across the north Cork area including in Fermoy and Mitchelstown. Unfortunately, I am meeting a huge number of people who are retired or who have complicated healthcare needs and who want access to GP se…
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.