Elections are a funny thing – candidates talk incessantly about their plans and their overall record, but it can be hard to pin them down on exactly where they stood on the important questions in recent years.
At Gript Media, we believe an important role of the media is to foster accountability. That is not to say that we pass judgment on the record of individual TDs on the votes that they have cast over the last five years, but it is to say that we believe information about their voting record should be publicly available and easily accessible.
That’s why we’ve invested time in building a tool for Gript Subscribers that allows you to see exactly where your candidate stood on the issues that matter to you on five key issues: Free Speech, Gender Identification, Abortion Exclusion Zones, Assisted Dying, and The Asylum and Migration pact.
A green tick beside their name means they voted for the relevant legislation, or in the case of the Gender Recognition Act, which passed without division, allowed it to pass without protest. A red X means they voted against it. And a blank line means that they were either not a sitting TD when the vote passed, abstained, or were otherwise absent for the vote.
We have selected these five topics because we think they provide a good guide to a candidate’s broad ideological output. These are issues that divide the electorate, and on which opinions can be sharply polarised. We believe that they provide a useful insight into a candidate’s “values” – where they stand on fundamental questions of personal liberty and human rights.
This is very much a work in progress, and we’ll be expanding and amending it over time; we’re launching it earlier than expected to ensure people have access to the information before the election. My colleague Gary Kavanagh will be working to develop this project, and he’s happy to recieve any comments, suggestions, or complaints you have at gary@gript.ie.
You will note, examining the voting records, that no single TD we have listed here cast votes against all the listed pieces of legislation. This, to some extent, is normal and to be expected. You will also note that very few TDs voted for all the pieces of legislation. Again, in our voting system, this is to be expected.
It’s also important to note the limitations of this information. For example, some TDs may have voted against legislation not because they oppose it, but because it did not go far enough. For example, many TDs on the left may have voted against the EU migration and asylum pact because they felt it to be an attack on the human rights of migrants.
Nevertheless, their “no” votes count the same as somebody who votes against it because they wished to retain Irish sovereignty over migration policy.
So what we’re providing here is not some kind of definitive guide, but rather a hopefully useful indicator on a range of issues of how your TDs actually voted, and therefore might be expected to continue to vote, on the issues that matter to you.
With just nine days left before polling day, Gript Media will continue to cover the election in as much detail as we can, ensuring that the major parties address the issues that matter to our readers and trying to bring balance to a campaign that too often ignores the voices of outsiders attempting to break into the system.
None of this work is possible without the support of you, our readers. We appreciate that continued support, and will endeavour to continue to earn it.