Patrick O'Donovan
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 | 789 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 15 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 8 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 1 |
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 | 0 | 0 |
Not scored: 7 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 0 where no clear position was stated in the debate.
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 | 708 | +0.530 | +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 | 11 | -0.519 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 5 | +0.555 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 30 | +0.560 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 25 | +0.654 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 9 | +0.659 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 5 | +0.667 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 52 | +0.704 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 10 | +0.871 |
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.
Aontaím leis an méid atá ráite ag an Teachta Ó Snodaigh maidir le cé chomh tábhachtach is atá an t-ábhar sin. Bhí ceist eile aige ar an ábhar sin ach tá an t-am caite againn. Beidh ar an Aire, an Teachta Calleary, déileáil leis an ábhar sin sa Bhille atá os co…
Roimh an díospóireacht sin, d’iarr mé ar na hoifigigh i mo Roinn dul i dteagmháil leis an Roinn Oideachais chun an t-ábhar sin a phlé, mar tá a fhios agam go bhfuil an rud sin ag cur isteach go mór ar na tuismitheoirí agus na daltaí agus tá cuid de na ceistean…
Tá mé buíoch de na Teachtaí. Mar a dúirt mé cheana féin, beidh deis againn nuair atá mé ós comhair an choiste an rud sin a phlé. An rud is tábhachtaí ná go mbeadh na toghcháin ar siúl in 2024. Cuireann an Teachta Ó Cathasaigh ceist an-thábhachtach ós ár gcomha…
Maidir leis na treoirlínte, tá mo Roinn críochnaithe leis an ábhar sin. Tá na treoirlínte ag an Roinn tithíochta; mar sin, is ceist don Roinn sin í sin. Is ceist an-thábhachtach í. Maidir leis an mBille seo, tuigim cé chomh tábhachtach is atá an Bille seo, go …
Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCeann Comhairle agus leis an Teachta. Mar is eol don Teachta, tá an-chuid oibre déanta ag an Roinn agus ag Comhchoiste na Gaeilge, na Gaeltachta agus Phobal Labhartha na Gaeilge ar an ábhar sin agus, go háirithe freisin, ina measc, le…
Níl mé in ann an cheist sin a fhreagairt. B’fhéidir go mbeidh seans ag an Aire, an Teachta Calleary, an rud sin a réiteach nuair a bheidh sé ag freagairt na gceisteanna eile maidir leis an Roinn nua, a mbeidh freagracht na Gaeltachta faoina cúram. Tuigim, áfac…
Mar is eol don Teachta, is é an tAire tithíochta an tAire a bhfuil freagracht don pholasaí tithíochta sa Dáil seo air. Tá an rud sin soiléir. Maidir leis an rud a rinne mé, tá a fhios ag an Teachta go ndearna mé mo dhícheall an cheist sin a réiteach nuair a bh…
Is áisíneacht de chuid an Fhoras Teanga Thuaidh-Theas é Foras na Gaeilge. Is í an Chomhairle Aireachta Thuaidh-Theas, CATT, a cheadaíonn na buiséid do na forais tras-Teorann uile, an Foras Teanga san Áireamh. I mbliana, tá soláthar iomlán de €18.5 milliún i Me…
Is ceisteanna iad sin do bhord an Údaráis féin. Rinne mé dearmad mo bhuíochas a ghabháil agus rath a ghuí ar na baill atá ceaptha ar bhord an údaráis le déanaí. Is iad sin: Máire Áine Uí Ailín, Sonya Uí Shíoda, Caitlín Ní Bhroin, Mícheál Ó Drisleáin, Seán Ó Cu…
Tuigim go bhfuil an freagra seo casta ach tá sé an-tábhachtach dom, mar Aire Stáit, an freagra cruinn a chur os comhair na Dála. Chríochnaigh mé ar an gcoiste logainmneacha. Agus é beartaithe feidhm a thabhairt do na forálacha uile seo roimh dheireadh na blian…
Bhí cruinniú ag mo Roinn le Comhar Naíonraí na Gaeltachta ar an 21 Meán Fómhair chun na féidearthachtaí maidir le scéim nua a chíoradh agus tá beartaithe ag an Roinn bualadh le grúpa ionadaíoch ar na hoifigigh pleanála teanga sna seachtainí amach romhainn chun…
Tá an t-ádh ar an Aire, an Teachta Calleary, mar níl aon cheist faighte agam faoi láthair trí mheán an Bhéarla. Cé go bhfuil roinnt de na ceisteanna trí mheán na Gaeilge, tá mé ag déanamh mo dhícheall na ceisteanna a phlé amach. Ar aon nós, tá scéim na mbóithr…
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.