Lynn Ruane
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 | 342 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 177 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 48 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 15 |
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 | 13 | 0 |
| Contradicted their words | 2 | 0 |
Not scored: 129 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 1 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 support (mover, confidence 0.95) · voted NIL · with their party
I move amendment No. 40: In page 54, to delete lines 10 and 11. Amendment No. 40 seeks to delete a particular circumstance where An Bord Pleanála could approve works that materially contravene development or local area plans where the works are of "strategic, regional or national importance". We have observed significant restrictions on the authority and power of local government in recent decades and we fear this pr…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I was not here at the beginning of the conversation. I apologise for anything that is repeated. Whatever about the other removals, in relation to section 3, in terms of further cementing what is already a bad law in relation to section 3 stop and search powers, in Ireland, the section 3 stop and search power within the drugs Act is used and abused to profile, harass and have a very low bar for policing. It is not nec…
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 | 966 | +0.253 | +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 |
|---|---|---|
| War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish | 14 | -0.183 |
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 17 | -0.159 |
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 84 | +0.010 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 22 | +0.071 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 10 | +0.108 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 14 | +0.188 |
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 23 | +0.203 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 171 | +0.212 |
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 16 | +0.301 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 60 | +0.303 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 23 | +0.310 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 225 | +0.379 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 21 | +0.429 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 19 | +0.487 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 5 | +0.564 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 9 | +0.590 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 7 | +0.592 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 21 | +0.640 |
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 will look again at my definition between now and Report Stage but the most concerning thing is the word "humiliating" and whether we are combing the two or if there are separate definitions in the Bill. Bullying is an objective test. There is a repeated elem…
I welcome the Taoiseach to the Chamber. Reference was made to the decrease in poverty rates during the pandemic. It is understood that decrease in child poverty rates was linked to the economic measures during the pandemic. According to Central Statistics Offi…
I am stating the fact that a Congolese man is dead who went into a shop and was accused of shoplifting. That is in all of the media reports. No amount of investigations can ever explain or give any sort of reason that would be acceptable that a man would go in…
This conversation interests me. I understand the Senator's point about something that is done lawfully causing distress, but there are also situations where someone uses lawful measures as a tool to abuse. On Second Stage, I mentioned two people on whose radar…
I echo what Senator Hoey said about the health committee meeting. I had to turn off the camera at one stage as I thought I was going to have a panic attack. I thought I had been hurled through time, given everything I have stood for in this Chamber over the la…
I move amendment No. 1: In page 9, to delete lines 15 to 18. Amendments Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive - are being considered together because they relate to the deletion of all sections of the Bill that provide for the introduction of the use of incapacitant spray, o…
I move amendment No. 16: In page 5, between lines 12 and 13, to insert the following: “Harassment 5. (1) A person who, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse— (a) intentionally or recklessly— (i) follows, watches, pesters or besets another person, (ii) …
I move amendment No. 10: In page 8, to delete lines 16 to 18. This legislation will allow people who may have been served a notice to quit during the Covid-19 emergency period to remain in their homes for the duration of this public health crisis, which is wel…
I thank the Minister for accepting amendment No. 22. It is a good addition to the Bill, especially given what I said in my contributions regarding facial recognition. It gives me some comfort to know it will be there. On amendment No 25, the Minister knows tha…
I move amendment No. 145: In page 76, to delete lines 19 and 20. I welcome the Minister back to the Chamber. I will speak to amendments Nos. 145 and 146. They both seek to address the inclusion of online content by which a person bullies or humiliates another …
According to the press release relating to Health Research Board's study on gambling prevalence: There is a marked correlation between problem gambling and substance use (drug use, alcohol use disorder and/or smoking), with 13% of those with an alcohol use dis…
Senator Ward was correct in what he said regarding proportionality. I did not have the time to rewrite a section between the Bill being passed in the Dáil on Thursday and being taken in the House today. I will get that little dig in there. As Senator Seery Kea…
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.