Lorraine Clifford-Lee
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 | 283 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 25 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 15 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 1 |
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 | 0 | 0 |
Not scored: 10 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 0 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 | 259 | +0.399 | +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 | -0.864 |
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 9 | -0.395 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 39 | +0.305 |
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 8 | +0.328 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 27 | +0.397 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 9 | +0.490 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 77 | +0.611 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 11 | +0.701 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 8 | +0.715 |
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 5 | +0.724 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 23 | +0.754 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 8 | +0.835 |
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 wish to refer to the war in Ukraine. We are seven months into the conflict. I will focus on the sexual violence perpetrated on the women and children of Ukraine. We know sexual violence is a recognised weapon of war. There has not been much discussion in Ire…
I second the motion. I commend Senator O'Loughlin on bringing this Bill to the House. I am very proud to support it. I commend Jason Poole on his tireless work in the midst of unbelievable horror and grief for his family. He has turned that into a positive and…
Tá fáilte roimh an Aire. Tá áthas orm go bhfuil deis againn amanna feithimh maidir le ranna timpistí agus éigeandála a phlé inniu. Is ábhar buartha é. Tá imní agus faitíos ar dhaoine ar fud na tíre dul chuig na ranna timpistí agus éigeandála. Tá tionchar ollmh…
A number of weeks ago, a resolution was before the European Parliament condemning the slaughter of 30,000 people by the Iranian authorities, the use of execution as a tool of oppression of the people of Iran and the treatment of women, and supporting the Women…
At this stage, I should not be naive, but in my naivety I was going to ask our colleagues to amend their social media accounts to reflect the position that any misapprehension or misunderstanding had been cleared up, but I know that is not going to happen. Of …
Tá an-díomá orm an méid sin a chloisteáil ón Aire Stáit. Tá sé seafóideach mar déanann tíortha eile, ar nós Ceanada agus gach tír eile le dhá theanga, an méid sin gan aon fhadhb. Tá sé maslach amach is amach má chloínn an Rialtas leis an gcinneadh sin. Is féid…
Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. Níor theastaigh uaim í a chur faoi bhrú. Chuir mé an cheist seo isteach i mBéarla inné. Cé go bhfuil mé ag úsáid na Gaeilge anois, níl mé ag súil le freagra i nGaeilge uaithi ar an ócáid seo muna bhfuil sí in ann é sin a thabhair…
Tá fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. Tá an-áthas orm go bhfuil an deis againn inniu an tseirbhís ríthábhachtach meabhairshláinte CAMHS a phlé léi. Tá go leor plé déanta againn, mar a luaigh sí, de bharr fhoilsiú thuarascáil Maskey le déanaí agus leathnú an athbhreit…
Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit agus maidin mhaith dó. Tá áthas orm gur tháinig sé os comhair an tSeanaid chun an t-ábhar seo a phlé. Chuir mé an ní i dTosach Suíonna seo faoi bhráid an tSeanaid mar go bhfuil deis iontach ann don Rialtas céim a ghlacadh i …
Yesterday, a former garda, Paul Moody, received a sentence for coercive and violent behaviour towards a former partner. Senators will recall that this former garda is currently serving a sentence for coercive control of a partner. This latest incident predated…
Gabhaim buíochas leis an Cathaoirleach Gníomhach. Fáiltím roimh an Aire le linn Sheachtain na Gaeilge. Is iontach a bheith anseo ag labhairt faoin Ghaeilge, ach tá an-chuid fadhbanna ann. Cé go bhfuil an-chuid déanta, tá fadhbanna ann faoi láthair, faoi mar a …
Ba mhaith liom fáilte ó chroí a chur roimh Linda. Is iontach an rud é go bhfuil sí linn chun Seachtain na Gaeilge a cheiliúradh agus is iontach an rud é a scéal a chloisteáil. Tá a cuid oibre thar na blianta ar son a pobail agus ar son a teanga in oirthear Bhé…
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.