Joe Carey
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 | 410 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 4 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 3 | |
| … 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 | 0 | 0 |
| Contradicted their words | 1 | 0 |
Not scored: 1 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 | 177 | +0.541 | +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 | 5 | +0.344 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 19 | +0.618 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 7 | +0.635 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 7 | +0.835 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 9 | +0.919 |
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 welcome this important Bill, which is another part of the jigsaw the Minister has been bringing before us in reforming and updating the criminal justice system. I congratulate the Minister, Deputy McEntee, on bringing this important Bill before the House tod…
I also want to recognise and welcome the Minister of State's presence for this debate. This is an evolving situation in Doolin which has resulted in six volunteers resigning earlier this week. These resignations have taken place amid claims of bullying and har…
The Minister of State will be aware of the work of the Committee on Transport and Communications concerning the marine casualty investigation board following the Court of Justice of the European Union judgment against Ireland for failing to implement internati…
Householders in County Clare are anxiously awaiting admission to the enhanced defective concrete block scheme. Further laboratory analysis of affected homes in County Clare has taken place and categorically demonstrates the presence of pyrite. The work was car…
I oppose the motion put forward by the Social Democrats. The proposed increase in the Horse and Greyhound Fund is necessary, given the severe impact of Covid-19 on the horse and greyhound industries. The most recent economic assessment of the industry was unde…
This is a real problem, particularly for young people in rural parts of County Clare. A large number of people get in touch with me and I subsequently get in touch with the RSA. Some have been waiting for six months to get a test and it is just not good enough…
I welcome this opportunity to contribute to this important debate and take this opportunity to express my sympathies to Ashling Murphy’s family, her partner, her friends, the entire school community in Durrow National School and the people of Tullamore and Off…
I thank the Minister for her reply. This is a welcome measure, which diverts the proceeds of crime, which have been seized from criminals, and puts them back into communities. When does the Minister expect that successful applicants will be informed? She refer…
I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this important matter for debate. Many Members will have heard the episode of RTÉ's "Documentary on One" over the weekend entitled "Fire in the Sky". The programme was brilliantly produced by Donal O'Herlihy and Michae…
I seek an update on the ongoing overcrowding at the emergency department in University Hospital Limerick and on the efforts by the Minister and the HSE to address the situation, particularly as we face into a very difficult winter period.…
I refer to the devastating news that was delivered yesterday to 81 Aer Lingus cabin crew. The proposed move will have a devastating impact on the mid-west region. Connectivity is key to the recovery of the economy, for business and for tourism. Shannon Airport…
I thank the Minister. I join him in complimenting our front-line staff at UHL. They are under extreme pressure. We are unfortunately a permanent fixture at the top of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation's Trolley Watch figures. Today there are 47 people…
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.