Mattie McGrath
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 | 782 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 254 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 153 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 31 |
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 | 15 | 3 |
| Contradicted their words | 9 | 1 |
Not scored: 101 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 4 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
I have been contacted by several credit unions, including Clonmel Credit Union, which is in a very healthy position. The members ensured a €3.6 million profit this year, €1.7 million of which is to be distributed back to the members. They are the people who create the credit union with the wonderful staff there as well. The Central Bank can change this overnight to allow a virtual AGM to take place. Audit accounts ha…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.90) · voted NIL · against their party
Some Government Deputies wrongly accused Deputy Shortall of not supporting the Garda, so in case they try to do the same again, I want to put on the record that I support the Garda 100%. We have an excellent community division in Tipperary. It was stood down but is back up running now. I support Sergeant Ray Moloney, Superintendent Denis Whelan and all the inspectors in Cahir and thank them for the work they have don…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
The Taoiseach has met Cara Dermody a number of times. It is very unfair that a child of that age has to come up here each week in all kinds of weather with her father - her mother Noelle is at home looking after her two younger brothers - to look for something that is supposed to be provided under the law. The Disability Act clearly states that children must be assessed within a given period of time. How can the HSE …
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
Our group is concerned about the late hours for the staff. It is crazy and ridiculous to have that both nights this week. This is a distasteful game. It was hidden during the election three weeks ago. We saw the rush when the motion was proposed in late April to get it done by 9 May. That backfired and when people were getting it in the neck on the doors the motion was postponed. Disgracefully, the Government hid and…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
There is a very thin line between anarchy and good living. I support gardaí in their efforts always and, indeed, last Thursday night. Shamefully, however, the numbers of gardaí in my county have dropped to an appalling level. Carrick-On-Suir, with 5,000 in its town and hinterland, has four gardaí and two sergeants. Its complement is 14 gardaí and four sergeants. Up in Clonmel, it is almost as bad, and there is Cahir,…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.81) · voted NIL · with their party
I again express my sincere horror that the Government and the Minister have set their faces against dealing with this issue in any shape, make or form. They have tried to convince themselves, because they need to convince themselves, that they are doing something for the good of the survivors. That would take some convincing, and if they can convince themselves of that, they can convince themselves of anything. We ha…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.75) · voted NIL · with their party
I move amendment No. 1: In page 9, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following: “ “investment undertaking” includes a retail credit firm as defined in section 28 of the Central Bank Act 1997 and any other person who owns credit which is being serviced by a credit servicer as defined in section 28(2) of that Act.”. I am very concerned about the lack of time allowed for this debate. While I know there is a big eve…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.75) · voted NIL · with their party
The Taoiseach is aware of who Cara Darmody is. Cara is here today in the Gallery with her dad, Mark. She is directly in front of the Taoiseach so he might give her a wave. She is the most high-profile autism advocate in Ireland today. She recently sat the junior cycle maths exam at only 11 years of age to raise awareness of the lack of therapies and assessments for autistic children. She received an incredible result…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.45) · voted NIL · with their party
The Minister must have also lost my telephone number, but that is okay. There are 3,500 people waiting on the housing list in County Tipperary. We have many homeless. We have agencies and people. We have direct build, modular build housing and everything else now for people fleeing the Ukraine war. I do not oppose that, but we cannot do it for our own people. Someone said earlier that the Minister introduced 22 Acts.…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.45) · voted NIL · with their party
When is the Taoiseach going to support the men and women, the postmasters of Ireland, who did sterling work during the Covid period? Post offices were some of the only places that stayed open and looked after people. The postmasters are on their knees, and if they do not get some package by this summer, they will be gone. Beidh siad imithe. The Taoiseach knows this better than I do. They have been 20 years telling us…
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 | 2,002 | +0.112 | +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 |
|---|---|---|
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 45 | -0.167 |
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 177 | -0.164 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 34 | -0.087 |
| War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish | 33 | -0.050 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 88 | -0.041 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 49 | +0.013 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 560 | +0.105 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 40 | +0.129 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 32 | +0.145 |
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 42 | +0.153 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 39 | +0.173 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 18 | +0.224 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 16 | +0.234 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 16 | +0.271 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 55 | +0.300 |
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 31 | +0.307 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 51 | +0.367 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 43 | +0.463 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 5 | +0.635 |
| Irish-language contributions (sorted by language, not policy) agus · seo · leis · sin · atá · bhfuil | 7 | +0.659 |
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.