Paul Gavan
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 | 375 | |
| … spoke in that debate section | 185 | |
| … vote tied to a specific question | 67 | |
| … position stated clearly enough to score | 27 |
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 | 19 | 0 |
| Contradicted their words | 8 | 0 |
Not scored: 118 where the vote could not be tied to a question, 1 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 support (mover, confidence 0.95) · voted NIL · with their party
I move amendment No. 3: In page 10, line 14, after “customers” to insert “, society”. I welcome the Minister of State. I am moving this amendment on behalf of my colleagues from the Civil Engagement Group. I note that some other amendments relating to this section were unfortunately ruled out of order. Senator Higgins would say that the ruling in this regard is unfortunate because the amendments were about how collec…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I move amendment No. 2: In page 5, between lines 1 and 2, to insert the following: "Parliamentary oversight of Covid-19 regulations 1. (1) Every relevant statutory instrument made by the Minister shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas not less than 48 hours before they come into effect and— (a) where, before the date on which paragraph (b) would have effect, a resolution annulling the instrument is passed …
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.85) · voted NIL · with their party
I move recommendation No. 7: In page 54, between lines 23 and 24, to insert the following: “Report on restoring cap on intangible assets 23. The Minister shall, within six months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report on restoring the 80 per cent cap on intangible assets onshored between 2015 and 2017 that can be written off against profits at the rate of 100 per cen…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.80) · voted TA · with their party
I want to come back in because this is a good amendment. I have to agree entirely with Senator Boyhan that talking about the spirit of the amendment really means nothing at the end of the day unless the amendment is accepted. Talking about the role that the new mayor will have in terms of chairing is all well and good but, as has been pointed out, we are here to discuss the legislation today. What I find really conce…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.75) · voted NIL · with their party
I apologise, that is my fault. This is our last Order of Business. I wish everyone well for the summer and thank the Cathaoirleach, Martin, Bridget, all the staff and everyone who helps us to do our work on a daily basis. They provide an incredible service and on behalf of Sinn Féin, I am very grateful for that. I will raise a few issues. First, I compliment Senator Higgins and am delighted to hear Senator O'Loughlin…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.75) · voted NIL · with their party
Gabhaim mo leithscéal. I am afraid I have to speak in English. I want to speak in support of the point made by Senator Higgins. I am extremely concerned about the Government's rush to privatise our job services. I have been contacted by people in Galway, Limerick and throughout the west, in particular. The Senator makes a valid point. Why not take advantage of this Bill in a constructive way to give a weighting to th…
Read as oppose (cue, confidence 0.51) · voted TA · with their party
I want to welcome Sarah Benson from Women's Aid, who is in the Gallery to witness this debate first hand. The Minister said he has listened to concerned voices. I do not understand how he can say that when he knows the reduced pay provisions remain in the Bill. What the Minister has not done in his response is in any way address the Sinn Féin amendment. The key part of the amendment is that pay in respect of an emplo…
Read as support (cue, confidence 0.45) · voted NIL · with their party
It is good to see the Minister, who is very welcome. He will not be surprised to know that Sinn Féin will oppose the motion. I wish to make it clear that we are not opposed to continuing reasonable levels of restrictions, such as face masks, testing requirements, travel restrictions and measures deemed essential to combating the spread of Covid-19. We accept that some restrictions will need to be maintained, but circ…
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 | 987 | +0.280 | +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 |
|---|---|---|
| Health scandals, inquiries and bereaved families hospital · families · family · cancer · children · did | 58 | -0.263 |
| Justice, policing and defence garda · defence · justice · violence · criminal · gardaí | 8 | -0.241 |
| War, Ukraine, Israel and human rights international · ireland · ukraine · israel · war · irish | 72 | -0.219 |
| Health services, HSE and disability health · services · care · service · hse · mental | 27 | -0.069 |
| Housing, rent and homelessness housing · homes · local · accommodation · rent · affordable | 54 | +0.009 |
| Children, families and young people children · women · young · child · family · families | 11 | +0.086 |
| Local government, roads and regional funding county · cork · discuss · west · road · local | 9 | +0.193 |
| Education and schools school · education · schools · children · students · special | 9 | +0.265 |
| Cost of living, tax and budget cost · tax · budget · energy · costs · increase | 78 | +0.331 |
| Procedural and rhetorical filler (low-content) important · like · good · debate · did · does | 266 | +0.392 |
| Party-political exchange (party names dominate) workers · rights · right · sinn · féin · irish | 133 | +0.400 |
| Legislation, courts and legal process act · legislation · shall · court · person · information | 95 | +0.459 |
| Transport, Dublin and rural development local · transport · dublin · city · public · community | 25 | +0.479 |
| Covid-19 and public health emergency covid · health · public · pandemic · measures · safety | 17 | +0.491 |
| Employment, welfare schemes and business supports scheme · businesses · payment · sector · employment · insurance | 65 | +0.528 |
| Departmental programmes and funding (diffuse) department · national · funding · new · important · programme | 19 | +0.588 |
| Media, banking and State companies ireland · irish · media · industry · companies · post | 12 | +0.610 |
| EU and international relations ireland · european · irish · union · europe · countries | 16 | +0.660 |
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 join others in sending my commiserations and condolences to the family of the late former Senator Dermot Fitzpatrick and to our colleague, Senator Mary Fitzpatrick. It is sad news. Along with others, I regularly raise University Hospital Limerick. The figure…
I also ask for a debate on the horrific murders in the West Bank yesterday. Among those killed by Israeli forces were a 72-year-old man, a 16-year-old boy and a 66-year-old man who died of tear gas inhalation. I will quote from the Al Jazeera report that detai…
That is quite an extraordinary statement. There are approximately 400 words and not one word of condemnation of the Saudi dictatorship. It has killed 400,000 people and there is not one word of condemnation. I asked the Minister of State for an explanation as …
We are not finished yet. First, for the record I never used the word "landlord" at all in my contribution so the Minister might care to listen a little more closely. Second, the Minister's contribution is extraordinary because one would almost think from liste…
First, I express condolences to our colleagues in Fianna Fáil on the very sad death of Damien O’Reilly. I also wish a warm welcome to the Superintendent here today. I am lucky enough to be one of the representatives in this Chamber in the Parliamentary Assembl…
That is a shocking message from Senator Clonan this morning. It is an indictment of Government failure in relation to the health service. I have to speak of another consistent failure of the health service in Ireland, namely, University Hospital Limerick where…
This is quite extraordinary. This seems to have escaped the notice of most people. It is bad enough that US troops are using our civilian airport at Shannon on their way to wreak havoc across the world. We need only look at the war in Yemen, supported by the U…
I raise the issue of illegal pushbacks across the European Union and the devastating effects they are having on the victims themselves but also on the values that we so often hear proclaimed regarding the European Union. I want to quote directly from a report …
Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. I welcome Mayor Matsui. It is great to have him here. His presence is extremely timely, given the current chaos in the world. I also commend Senator Currie on taking this initiative. Seventy-nine years ago, the US dropp…
It is so disappointing. We have a seat on the UN Security Council yet the Minister of State says the Government will not comment on perhaps the biggest human rights case facing the western world. What a contrast with the situation in Belarus. That is a situati…
I wish to raise two issues regarding prisoners I know the Acting Leader will be very familiar that we regularly bring up the issue of prisoners and justice in the Council of Europe. I am particularly concerned about what is happening in Türkiye and have been f…
I join with others in wishing everybody well on this International Women’s Day. I too wish to bring up the issue of housing and the appalling decision by this Government to end the ban on evictions. Like Senator Clonan, I was really struck by "Prime Time" last…
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.