Malcolm Byrne
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 | 728 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 95 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 47 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 9 |
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 | 5 | 0 |
| Contradicted their words | 4 | 0 |
Not scored: 48 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 thank the Minister. I hope that we will be able to move through Report and Final Stages a lot more quickly than we moved through Committee Stage as we considered many of these issues in detail during those debates. I put on record our thanks to the Minister and her officials for their engagement not only in this House, but also privately, in seeking to address some of the concerns and suggestions we had. Many of th…
Read as support (mover, confidence 0.95) · voted NIL · with their party
I thank the Minister and her officials again. By the end of today, the Minister will have been in the Chamber for 16 hours dealing with many aspects of this Bill. We agreed not to subject it to a guillotine because of its importance and that we would go through the Bill. I would hope that during today's discussion brevity and concise contributions would help. However, if we debate many issues in depth at this Stage, …
Read as support (mover, confidence 0.95) · voted NIL · with their party
I move amendment No. 54: In page 29, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following: “Youth Advisory Panel 19A. (1) The Commission shall, within one year of its establishment, establish a Youth Advisory Panel, in accordance with the provisions of this section. (2) The Panel shall advise the Commission on issues of interest to children and young people, on online safety, and on any other matters as the Commission may…
Read as support (mover, confidence 0.95) · voted NIL · with their party
I agree with many of the points made by Senator Higgins. Regarding the Minister’s response, this is at the heart of our democracy. I refer to ensuring that all sides of a political argument get aired. It is important that discussion is based on evidence. As the Minister rightly stated, however, the political landscape has changed enormously, and it is important that a broad range of views is well reflected. Senator H…
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 | 1,064 | +0.648 | +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 |
|---|---|---|
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 6 | +0.319 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 24 | +0.494 |
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 12 | +0.524 |
| War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish | 59 | +0.547 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 24 | +0.552 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 29 | +0.554 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 54 | +0.673 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 23 | +0.673 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 283 | +0.689 |
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 15 | +0.692 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 27 | +0.718 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 71 | +0.753 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 26 | +0.758 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 9 | +0.774 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 83 | +0.807 |
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 28 | +0.810 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 71 | +0.814 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 87 | +0.835 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 18 | +0.852 |
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.
As the Taoiseach is aware, there is overcrowding in every prison in the State at present. That has consequences for the prisoners but also for the prison officers. While punishment has to be part of the prison experience, it is also essential that we address r…
Along with others, I welcome Senator Malachai O'Hara. His commitment to equality and to the reconciliation of people is something that should inspire all of us. It is appropriate to acknowledge his predecessor, former Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile, who did an awf…
I am sure the Leader will join me in again expressing our solidarity with the people of Ukraine following the horrific and deliberate targeting by Russia of the main children's hospital in Kyiv overnight. This is part of an appalling ongoing war and it is some…
I join my colleague, Senator Murphy, in expressing concern around what is happening to our retail workers. Conor McMorrow prepared an excellent package for the "Prime Time" programme last night that showed some horrors, including the physical and verbal attack…
I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter. I acknowledge that the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, has been providing a strong lead role, on behalf of the Government, in this area but I am concerned about how long it is taking to put the nece…
I endorse the remarks of Senator Black around the importance of music and the arts. As she said, it is great that gigs are back and events are starting to happen again. Things have been difficult and we need to support the sector as it reopens. I want to raise…
I thank the Minister of State for his response and I am glad the Government is looking at the potential impact across a range of sectors. As he said, this may not happen this century but there is a real risk of it happening. We are already seeing a lot of stra…
Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. This weekend marks the second anniversary of the largest ever cyberattack on a State institution or agency. As far as we know, it is the largest cyberattack ever in the State. The attack in question was, of course, on the HSE…
I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter. He will be aware that in May of this year, we had a ransomware attack on our health services. It was the largest known attack on a health service anywhere in the world. For this to happen to any health serv…
Before I raise the one matter I wish to raise, I wish to state that I agree with the views expressed by Senator Mullen concerning higher education funding. The issue I wish to raise was reported by Naomi O'Leary in The Irish Times yesterday on questions around…
I commend the fact that the Minister has significantly increased the sums available when it comes to the humanitarian relief under storms. He did reference Storm Claudia, particularly with regard to the impact that had on County Wexford and the humanitarian re…
I welcome Senator Nikki Bradley. Your first day in the House is always very special so enjoy it, and get the run of the place, as they say. We look forward to Senator Bradley's contribution for however long the House will continue to sit. We are continually to…
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.