Micheál Martin
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 | 514 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 124 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 94 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 18 |
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 | 12 | 0 |
| Contradicted their words | 6 | 0 |
Not scored: 30 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 2 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
First of all, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed at all in respect of the tax situation governing carers. I think we need to keep everything in perspective and not create unjustified fears because I have checked this with both the Department of Finance and the Department of Social Protection. No new tax has been introduced, but what has happened on a forward-looking basis is the Department of Social Protection …
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.90) · voted TA · with their party
In the context of the European Parliament - I did not see the exact motion by the way - we do not impose the same rigid discipline on public representatives generally that the Deputy's party might because they have to look at the broad range of issues. Motions can be long and they can be this and that. We are against the Mercosur deal on the basis that we have asked our farmers to reduce emissions by approximately 25…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.90) · voted TA · with their party
This is unfortunately a very populist moment we live in. It is increasingly hard for even the most important issues to be debated in a serious way. For example, during the roll-out of the vaccines, even one of the most successful programmes in the world was relentlessly attacked in political and media circles for failing to deliver everything immediately. According to this approach, until everything has been achieved…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted TA · with their party
I thank Deputy Cahill for raising this issue. It is fair to say that he has been a persistent advocate and strong voice for rural Ireland in respect of this issue, particularly advocating for young couples and young people generally to be in a position to build houses in their localities, very often on their land. This will be of significance in helping to sustain rural communities across the western and south-wester…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.80) · voted TA · with their party
As I look at Ireland today, it is clear that there can be a degree of cynicism towards politics. Too often we dismiss the motivation of others, especially those we disagree with. I reject this. I believe in the good faith of those who seek to serve their communities in elective office, and I believe that politics remains a force for good - a force for positive change. I hope that we can have a co-operative Oireachtas…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.80) · voted TA · with their party
I move: That Dáil Éireann reaffirms its confidence in the Government. I welcome the opportunity to move the motion that Dáil Éireann has confidence in the Government and I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Government’s record and our plans for the rest of our mandate. This is a good time to take stock of the past two years. More importantly, it is also a good time to start having an honest debate between two ver…
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 | 12,192 | +0.451 | +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 | 10 | +0.067 |
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 37 | +0.224 |
| War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish | 77 | +0.311 |
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 37 | +0.393 |
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 50 | +0.398 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 45 | +0.506 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 186 | +0.511 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 95 | +0.516 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 10 | +0.568 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 49 | +0.616 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 14 | +0.633 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 69 | +0.635 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 22 | +0.651 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 74 | +0.678 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 188 | +0.684 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 42 | +0.687 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 110 | +0.728 |
| Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture | 33 | +0.751 |
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 8 | +0.773 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 61 | +0.794 |
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 am very clear on this. The Defence Forces are there to protect society and keep people safe. I believe that, as with An Garda Síochána, standards have to be very high, given the unique role the Defence Forces play in society, over and above other sectors of …
I do not believe the main street of the capital should be shut down for a week. I do not believe motorways should be blockaded for a week because it is an infringement on a basic human right - the right of free movement. It is a very basic right. I have proble…
It is indeed. Edgar Graham was murdered in 1983. It was a shocking murder. It happened between lectures. I think he was with Dermot Nesbitt at the time. It should be roundly condemned by all parties as a murder most foul. His family has received very little in…
I thank the gardaí on the work they did. They faced much provocation, some of which was premeditated, from what I saw. There were many agitators about the place. I refer to those who are anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown. I do not buy the argument that those …
On Deputy McDonald's issue I want to put on the record of the House my thanks to our public servants and my recognition of the work they do across government and the massive effort that has and continues to go into making sure those who have come to our countr…
When the report of independent review group of 12 months ago was published, I immediately took the decision and gave an instruction to the military that all sexual assault allegations were no longer to be dealt with by the military courts or under military law…
I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. It is commendable that he has done so. We are at a difficult period in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war on Ukraine. It is a good idea. I defer to the Ceann Comhairle but I heard President Zelenskyy last Sat…
Russia's invasion is and has been an horrific act, violating not just territorial integrity but also causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including Russian soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers and the appalling attacks on civilian infrastructure. Cir…
The Women of Honour made very significant submissions in respect of this and during the various meetings we had. I believe we have had eight or nine meetings. In December we agreed to include the term "psychological harm" in the definition of abuse and that th…
-----which claim that nothing positive has ever happened in our country and that just demanding more of everything is the answer. Even during the pandemic, the addiction to destructive opposition showed itself repeatedly. Every measure we introduced to help wo…
We are. It is the entire focus of our diplomatic endeavours. In my work and the work of the Taoiseach and the rest of the Government, we have tried in the first instance to work with other EU member states to push towards a permanent cessation of the war. It c…
I again clarify for Deputy Moynihan that enlisted personnel can be discharged for any one of 26 reasons outlined and identified in Defence Forces regulations. Of the 68, somewhere in the mid-40s are still before the courts. We have to allow due process to take…
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.