John Connolly
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 | 395 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 8 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 6 | |
| … 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: 2 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 5 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 | 161 | +0.505 | +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 | 5 | +0.029 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 8 | +0.414 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 6 | +0.523 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 5 | +0.816 |
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.
The Taoiseach identified the six areas where the Government sees the potential to make the most difference to children living in poverty. One of those mentioned is family homelessness. If the Taoiseach will forgive me, I am going to be parochial on the issue. …
Glacaim gur ról tánaisteach atá ag an údarás ach mar a dúirt an tAire, tá ról suntasach aige i saol na Gaeltachta. Tá sé ag déanamh oibre maithe le blianta fada. Glacaim leis chomh maith nach bhfuil sé éasca d’eagraíocht nach bhfuil aon chleachtadh ná taithí a…
The accident and emergency unit at University Hospital Galway has been the subject of much political commentary for many years. Many taoisigh and health Ministers have recognised the facility is not meeting the needs of the large population it is designed to s…
I recently raised with the Taoiseach the issue of the higher rate of suspected suicide among members of the Travelling community compared to the general population - there is a suspected rate difference of between seven and ten for members of the Travelling co…
Tugann sé muinín do mhuintir na Gaeltachta a chloisteáil go bhfuil an méid sin déanta againn go dtí seo. Glacaim leis gur tús é ach is maith an rud é go bhfuil an tAire ag labhairt leis na daoine tábhachtacha sin, lena n-áirítear Údarás na Gaeltachta, an Roinn…
I will pick up on a point Deputy Neville made about the abuse adults suffered online. One can only appreciate the significant impact that also has on children when they suffer abuse or bullying online. As adults, we have perspective. We receive political abuse…
Mar a luaigh mo chomhghleacaí anseo, is é seo an chéad deis a bhí agamsa labhairt ar phíosa reachtaíochta sa Teach, cé go raibh cuid le rá agam ar ráitis agus ábhair eile. Seo an chéad phíosa reachtaíochta atá deis agam labhairt air, agus cuirim fáilte roimh a…
In October 2022 I received, as a member of Galway City Council, a presentation from the NTA Galway park and ride office. Even though it is called the Galway park and ride office, it is based in Dublin. As a general point, there was limited comment in last week…
Tá a lán ráite ag na Teachtaí Ward agus McGuinness atá fíor. Rud a cheap mé féin le píosa ná go bhfuil orainn athrú meon ó thaobh úsáid na Gaeilge a bheith againn sa tír. Is é sin an dúshlán, go bhfuil ar chuile dhuine an méid Gaeilge atá aige nó aici a úsáid …
Molaim iarrachtaí an Aire an cheist a fhreagairt i nGaeilge. Tá mé fíorbhuíoch dó as sin. To put things in numerical perspective, 8% of children can attend primary school through Irish, and 3.8% of those proceed to attend secondary school in Irish. However, ti…
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.