Jerry Buttimer
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 | 631 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 81 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 45 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 8 |
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 | 5 | 0 |
Not scored: 36 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 oppose (cue, confidence 0.90) · voted TA · with their party
There are a number of issues amalgamating here. One concerns the Office of the Planning Regulator. Has the Land Development Agency engaged with local authorities that currently are compiling their area, county or city development plans? We must learn from the past. We must not replicate the mistakes we made in previous generations. That is why, in section 77(2)(c), reference is made to the need to counteract undue se…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.90) · voted TA · with their party
I welcome the Minister of State. This is important legislation. It is about ensuring we deliver affordable housing on publicly owned lands. The hypocrisy of those voting against this Bill should be laid clear for everybody. They are opposing the sale and building of housing on public lands for citizens of our country. This is what the Opposition is doing in opposing the Bill. As has Senator Burke, I have misgivings a…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I acknowledge it is about striking a balance. As my colleagues, Senators Seery Kearney, Currie and Maria Byrne, have said, we have been engaging with the Local Jobs Alliance. From talking to constituents who own and operate small and medium-sized enterprises, we understand there is a concern about the costs of this to the employer as well. I know I spoke earlier about the employee, and it might be said that I am ridi…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I loved reading Peig . I am probably in a minority of one in saying that. I did not like other aspects of the leaving certificate, though, such as rote learning. We are on a section that deals with reviews. We should not adopt a straitjacket approach to reviews. We have changed the model of education. We have empowered more people, there is more engagement and there are more consultative processes. We have a wider va…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I join with Senators Carrigy and Keogan in asking that we have a debate about the issues of travel agents and travel. Only this week, Ryanair has announced the closure of its bases in Cork and Shannon. I will repeatedly demand that we have an honest debate about whether we, as a country, are going to be open and open for business. It is incumbent upon us to have that honest debate in this Chamber. I ask Members of th…
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 | 2,128 | +0.702 | +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 |
|---|---|---|
| Irish-language contributions (sorted by language, not policy) agus · seo · leis · sin · atá · bhfuil | 14 | +0.256 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 7 | +0.647 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 35 | +0.692 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 187 | +0.692 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 48 | +0.773 |
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 19 | +0.773 |
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 8 | +0.786 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 63 | +0.786 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 6 | +0.809 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 70 | +0.818 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 352 | +0.828 |
| War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish | 52 | +0.839 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 154 | +0.866 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 22 | +0.876 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 54 | +0.882 |
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 15 | +0.903 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 10 | +0.905 |
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 43 | +0.909 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 11 | +0.918 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 16 | +0.937 |
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 have received notice from the following Senators that they propose to raise the following matters: Senator Seán Kyne - The need for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to outline the reason so many farmers have to repay moneys under the agri-cl…
Before I call on the Leader to reply to the Order of Business, it is important for us to remember that this day 100 years ago marked the end of our Civil War. We remember today all of those who died and suffered in that Civil War. We think of them today.…
Again, I thank Senator Byrne for raising this very important issue. I appreciate the importance of it for so many people. She is right that skin cancer is prevalent, and we are seeing that much more now with climate change. She is right that sunscreen is an im…
I rise to ask that the Minister for Education come to the House as a matter of urgency. I know we have the Minister for Health coming in this afternoon, but there is a need to have a debate on our response to contact tracing in an educational setting and subst…
Guím Lá Idirnáisiúnta na mBan sona do mo dheirfiúracha. Táim ag lorg díospóireachta leis an Aire Tithíochta, Rialtais Áitiúil agus Oidhreachta, an Teachta Darragh O'Brien, maidir leis an gciste athghiniúna agus forbartha uirbeach. I congratulate all our sister…
Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach Ghníomhach. Tá an Ghaeilge go flúirseach aici. Déanaim comhghairdeas le gach Ball a bhí páirteach sa díospóireacht iontach seo. Cloisim gach Seanadóir agus na smaointe a roinn siad liom. Tá an ceart ag Senator Higgins go…
I acknowledge the Minister of State's response but the in-house mediation has failed and there is no confidence. The Joint Committee on Transport and Communications has proposed that an independent mediator should be appointed. She can correct me if I am wrong…
No Member of any House has been publicly identified, let alone charged with any offence in relation to any allegation. It is just a media story.…
Please do. I encourage the Deputy to do so. If we do not take the experiences of the travelling public on board, then we cannot learn. There are mistakes and gaps. I would be the first to say that. I see it in my city of Cork. I am not living in an ivory tower…
Déanaim comhghairdeas leis an gCathaoirleach Gníomhach as ucht an post nua a fháil. Tá brón ar an Aire, an Teachta Calleary, nach bhfuil sé anseo. Tá sé in easnamh. Mar Aire Stáit sa Roinn Forbartha Tuaithe agus Pobail, fáiltím roimh an deis labhairt leis an S…
I have received notice from the following Senators that they propose to raise the following matters: Senator Martin Conway - the need for the Minister for Health to provide an update on the review of cardiac services; and his plans to develop a new cardiovascu…
I know I am meant to be impartial in the Chair, but I got caught in such a traffic jam on Tuesday morning while coming here for 11 a.m., for exactly the reasons outlined by the Senator. I support everything he said. I was stuck in traffic for an hour and a hal…
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.