Mary Butler
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 | 1,092 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 99 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 83 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 5 |
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 | 4 | 0 |
Not scored: 16 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 0 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 oppose (cue, confidence 0.90) · voted TA · with their party
The Deputies from that party who have gone on radio and television in recent days apparently believe they are Ministers-elect and want to force an election as soon as possible. It is a pity they were not so eager to act in the immediate wake of the most recent election. They chose instead to prioritise political opportunism over the national interest. Those of us on this side of the House acted and worked in collabor…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted TA · with their party
The party of political opportunism strikes again. Those in Sinn Féin were not so opportunistic back in 2020 when they had the chance to go into government. They chose instead to avoid the responsibility and leave the job of leading the country through a pandemic to someone else, thankfully. Sinn Féin decided they would take the course that benefited them most. They chose to sit on the sidelines in opposition and seek…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.80) · voted TA · with their party
I do not believe amendment No. 29 is necessary as, under the Bill, a person may only be involuntarily admitted when the consultant psychiatrist believes that person has a mental disorder that meets the criteria for involuntary admission. If at any point during the person's admission the responsible consultant psychiatrist no longer believes the person meets the criteria for involuntary admission, that person must be …
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.80) · voted TA · with their party
I move: Wednesday’s business shall be: - Motion re First Report of the Committee of Selection and appointment of Cathaoirligh (any division claimed to be taken immediately) - Motion re Appointment of Ordinary Members to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission (any division claimed to be taken immediately) - Motion re Dissolution of Select Committee on Subsidiarity (European Union Legislative Scrutiny) - Statements to…
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 | 2,090 | +0.589 | +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 |
|---|---|---|
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 5 | +0.203 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 238 | +0.533 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 74 | +0.554 |
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 34 | +0.572 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 12 | +0.605 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 78 | +0.640 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 117 | +0.681 |
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 5 | +0.717 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 625 | +0.719 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 22 | +0.753 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 33 | +0.759 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 9 | +0.793 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 418 | +0.806 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 14 | +0.835 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 42 | +0.842 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 5 | +0.878 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 12 | +0.921 |
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 thank both Deputies for raising this important issue. Any loss to suicide is a tragedy and I send my deepest condolences to the families, friends and communities affected. Each suicide affects the entire community and it is important that strong supports are…
I move: To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following: "recognises and notes: — the work of our healthcare workers in improving the health outcomes for patients with cancer; — the improvement in survival rates in Ireland during the curr…
I look forward to walking on my own Darkness into Light walk in Portlaw this weekend. I normally attend the one in Waterford city but this time I am staying local. It is great to see all of these walks. Initially, they were in the big cities and towns but now …
I thank the Deputy for raising this really important issue of cancer care. While still too high, cancer mortality rates in Ireland are falling faster than the EU average, having fallen by 17% between 2011 and 2021 compared with the EU average of 12%. Five-year…
No, I am fine. I would like to assure the Deputy that my Department is engaging closely with the HSE to ensure that this is undertaken in a timely and comprehensive manner. There is already a strong framework of standards, policies and procedures in place acro…
I move amendment No. 283: In page 160, after line 13, to insert the following: “PART 9 CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS TO OTHER ACTS Amendment of Defence Act 1954 208. The Defence Act 1954 is amended— (a) in section 202— (i) in subsection (1)(b), by the substitution …
"Mental illness" is not used in legislation in similar jurisdictions or by international bodies such as the UN. "Mental illness" is not a better term to use in the legislation. There needs to be a legal distinction between the term we use for the condition tha…
Amendments Nos. 15 to 17, inclusive, relate to the definition of "mental disorder" and propose to replace it with a definition of "psychosocial disability" or "mental health difficulty". We spent a lot of time debating this in the Dáil. I had expected to debat…
I move amendment No. 284: In page 160, after line 13, to insert the following: “Amendment of Coroners Act 1962 209. (1) The Coroners Act 1962 is amended— (a) in section 2, in the definition of “State custody or detention”— (i) by the deletion of paragraph (d),…
That will bring it to 45 suicide crisis assessment nurses, SCAN, in total in 2026. They work in the community closely with GPs. I announced six more teams. They work in pairs. One team follows on from the CAMHS team in Portiuncula Hospital to support young Tra…
I understand the Senator's frustration. It must be acknowledged that 149,000 children travelled to school on a school bus last year. Many of them had additional needs and were accompanied on the bus. It is an enormous logistical operation. As the country is at…
Could I request, when I am on my feet, that the Deputy's microphone might be turned off so I can get the opportunity to reply? The report of the working group on alternative approaches to the possession of drugs for personal use published in 2019 noted difficu…
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.