The Dáil is back from holidays…sort of
Today, parasols were taken down, buckets and spades put away and shorts and swimsuits were folded and returned to their drawers as Dáil Éireann returned from its summer ‘recess’.
To mark the event, Kevin Lynch, The Information Ireland decided to investigate how good our representatives’ are at actually representing us in the chamber – in other words, who turns up.
In order to claim travel expenses and other costs associated with being a Teachta Dála, deputies are given an electronic fob which records attendance at sessions in the Dáil. We are not quite sure where that checking in takes place, its distance from the chamber, or if ‘fobees’ are entitled to fob in and then fob off to the bar once scanned.
Those who spend their evenings watching Oireachtas TV might be surprised but the data seems to suggest that most TDs attendance is in fact quite high…of the days that they are supposed to be there.
Ah yes, before we start heaping praise on our hard working reps, it’s worth noting one or two points.
Firstly, they have been on holidays since July 14th. Secondly, so far this year there have been 263 days in 2017 but let’s be fair and exclude weekends and that gives us 189 days in the year. There have been, thus far 66 Dáil Sessions, meaning that it sits, on average, just over one in every three working days.
So let’s look at who among them shows up (on the record at least) the most.
Ten deputies, including Róisín Shorthall (SD) and newcomer Kate O’Connell (FG), have a 100% record. Forty-six more are within 3% of the magic number. Those include Labour’s Alan Kelly, 98%, and Independent Mattie McGrath, 97%.
In fact just 21 TDs have attended less than 90% of this year’s sessions in the lower chamber and the majority fall on the right side of the 80%.
Just three TDs have fallen below that mark so far this year; Sinn Féin’s Jonathan O’Brien, who represents Cork North-Central attended 77% of sessions, Mark McSharry of Fianna Fáil, son of former minister Ray McSharry and a representative of Sligo-Leitrim, turned up 68% of the time while Paul Murphy, who spent quite a few days in court between late April and June, had the lowest attendance with 58%.
Incidentally, Joan Burton’s attendance was 85%.
Only one political party, Solidarity, had an attendance of less than 90%. Again this was due, in part at least, to Paul Murphy’s tribulations in late Spring and early Summer. Solidarity’s three remaining deputies have each attended over 90% of Dáil sittings.
The Social Democrats topped the poll when it came to attendance with 96% between their two representatives.
Surprisingly, given their stance on political activism, The Green Party have showed up to just 91% of this year’s sessions so far.
It is worth noting that ministers records are not published.
