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Rhetoric and votes

Pa Daly

Experimental measure. Read the method before quoting a number.
This compares the position a member expressed in a debate with the way they voted in the division that debate produced. It is not a measure of honesty. A member who argues against a Bill and then votes against it scores as aligned; so does one who never departs from a party line they also argue for. Voting against your own stated view under a party whip is ordinary parliamentary behaviour, which is why the whip breakdown below sits next to the headline rather than underneath it. Full method and validation →
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only 9 scorable votes — below the 10 needed for an interval worth printing
100%
voted with their own party's majority · 1,035 votes

Why the denominator is small

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 cast1,053
… spoke in that debate section71
… vote tied to a specific question41
… position stated clearly enough to score9

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.

Alignment against the whip

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 partyVoted against own party
Matched their words 6 0
Contradicted their words 3 0

Not scored: 30 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 0 where no clear position was stated in the debate.

Where the words and the vote diverge

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.

2024-07-09 · An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business · Question put: "That the proposed arrangements for this week's business be agreed to". · Carried

Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party

We all need a functioning justice system. I, too, acknowledge the presence of members of the Bar Council. I support their call for restoration of the FEMPI-era cuts to their fees. I wish to ask the Taoiseach about the direction of An Garda Síochána. Following changes to the management model, a community engagement superintendent is supposed to provide leadership to deal with local crime, antisocial behaviour and road…

Full contribution → · The division →

2020-11-04 · Criminal Justice (Enforcement Powers) (Covid-19) Act 2020: Motion · Question put: "That the motion be agreed to." · Carried

Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party

I was interested to hear the recent remarks by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, on the issue of the imposition of fines for breaking quarantining rules. He spoke about how he would prefer there to be a greater understanding of the requirements and that a well-informed and knowledgeable public is more motivated to buy into such measures. Senior representatives of An Garda Síochána have spoken in similar te…

Full contribution → · The division →

2021-11-10 · Garda Síochána (Functions and Operational Areas) Bill 2021: Report and Final Stages · Amendment put: · Lost

Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.80) · voted TA · with their party

Ba mhaith liom labhairt ar son an leasaithe seo ar alt 33. Feicimid sa státseirbhís, sna bainc, i bhFeidhmeannacht na Seirbhíse Sláinte, in Aer Lingus agus ar na comharthaí bóithre that there will not be any change. There will not be any change in what happens on the ground unless it is mandated. Asking the Garda nicely to do it will not work. As referenced by Deputy Connolly, when we listened at the coiste today, at…

Full contribution → · The division →

Tone

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.

ModelSpeeches scored Mean valenceCorpus mean
vader818 +0.121 +0.423

Which policies move them

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.

TopicSpeechesMean valence
War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish 6 -0.599
Irish-language contributions (sorted by language, not policy) agus · seo · leis · sin · atá · bhfuil 17 -0.573
Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families 9 -0.438
Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did 27 -0.366
Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí 39 -0.238
Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable 17 -0.207
Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental 29 -0.060
Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance 11 +0.116
Climate, agriculture, energy and water water · climate · farmers · energy · food · agriculture 9 +0.201
Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety 15 +0.209
Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local 16 +0.215
Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase 24 +0.253
Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish 11 +0.316
Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information 72 +0.357
Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does 21 +0.361
Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community 6 +0.416
Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post 11 +0.541

The whip, across the whole corpus

Alignment by the party a member sat for on the day, with 95% Wilson intervals. This is the test the measure could have failed.

PartyAligned95% 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.

How the scorer scores

Two automated methods were built and both failed. What survives is the rule-based layer, which is why the coverage above is narrow.

MethodAccuracy95% 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.

Method

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.