About and data
Said and Done is an independent, non-commercial guide to the public record of Dáil Éireann: its debates, parliamentary questions, votes and members. Everything comes from the official record, dated and linked to its source. We add context and counts. We never add verdicts.
Where the record comes from
Parliamentary data comes from the Houses of the Oireachtas Open Data API. It is © Houses of the Oireachtas, reused under the Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence. This site is independent of the Houses of the Oireachtas and not endorsed by them.
Changes made: the official XML and JSON records are parsed into a database, and speakers are linked to TDs where the record allows it. Where no confident link exists, the contribution is shown unmatched rather than guessed. The site's own code is licensed AGPL-3.0-or-later; reusing the data carries no AGPL obligations.
The sitting schedule comes from the Oireachtas's published schedule feed and its provisional calendar of sittings, archived and checked the same way. Constituency boundaries on the TDs page come from Tailte Éireann's 2023 National Electoral Boundaries, licensed CC BY 4.0, simplified for display. They are reference material, not part of the parliamentary record.
Provenance
Every document we fetch is archived exactly as received and fingerprinted (SHA-256) before anything reads it. Each speech, question and vote links to its source document, with a view-raw link. When the Oireachtas publishes a correction, the new version is archived alongside the old. Nothing is deleted.
How the counts work
The Insights page, the TD pages and the topic pages count what the record holds. The rules below are the whole method.
- Counts, not scores. Every figure is a number of recorded items, or a share of one TD's own items. We do not combine them into scores or grades, and lists show only the top of a measure, never a "fewest" list or a full ranking.
- Words spoken are the words in each contribution in the Dáil chamber. Committee meetings are not in this archive. Speech from the chair (the Ceann Comhairle, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and acting chairs) is never counted as a TD's speaking. Speech the record marks as made as Taoiseach, Tánaiste, a Minister or a Minister of State is counted separately from speech as a TD.
- Topics are the subject headings the Oireachtas gives each question, as the record prints them. Catch-all headings about how a department is run, such as "Departmental Data", are left out of the range, focus and similarity figures, because they describe the form of a question rather than its subject.
- Headings used by only one party or one TD are exactly that: headings, not subjects. The same subject can be filed under several headings, so before a heading counts as one party's or one TD's, spellings that differ only by case, punctuation or a plural are treated as one. A heading only counts as mostly one party's if at least three of that party's TDs asked under it and none asked half of that party's questions.
- Shares of a TD's questions, such as the share under their most-used heading, are of every question they asked.
- Parties are the party a TD belonged to on the day of each item. Independents are counted together, because the record files them together.
- Regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and the Order of Business, are the debate headings that come round on more than twelve sitting days. They are listed after a day's other business, and left out of the "most speakers" list.
- "Asked about similar topics" is worked out by computer from the mix of headings on each TD's questions, giving more weight to headings few TDs use. It shows shared subjects, not shared views.
We count the words each TD spoke, but never analyse what they said: no word clouds, sentiment or distinctive terms for any TD. Everything said about a TD's subjects comes from the labels the Oireachtas itself puts on their questions. The words that surged are counted across the whole chamber, never for one person. The heavier counts are worked out once a day.
Search
Search covers every contribution in debate and every parliamentary question, matched on the forms of words as well as their exact spelling, so "housing" also finds "houses". The record includes some contributions in Irish; search finds those too.
Archive status
The archive updates itself from the official record several times a day; the last update finished at 18:40 on 25 October 2026 UTC. 99.4% of 75,575 contributions and 100.0% of 126,437 questions are matched to a TD. The rest are items the record itself does not attribute to a person, such as interruptions recorded as "Deputies".
Reusing this data
Everything here is republished from the Houses of the Oireachtas Open Data API, which is public and machine-readable. For the record in bulk or in structured form, take it from api.oireachtas.ie, the canonical source; every page here links to the exact document it came from. Reuse is under the Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence; this site adds no conditions of its own.
Corrections and contact
See our corrections and complaints policy and the public corrections log. Data protection is covered by our privacy notice, and use of the site by our terms. Contact: contact@saidanddone.ie · corrections@saidanddone.ie · security@saidanddone.ie.