As the Houses return from recess, we take a look at the work done in the Dáil, Seanad and committees in 2023.
House and committee meetings
It was a busy year for sittings in both the Dáil and Seanad, and the year included joint sittings of the Houses, most notably to hear an address by United States President Joseph R. Biden. Meanwhile, there were 616 committee meetings in public session reported.
Hover over the distinct areas in the chart to see how often each parliamentary body met.
Word counts of the Official Report
Although committee meetings outnumber those of Dáil and Seanad, the total word counts of the Official Report of meetings of committees and the Houses are roughly equivalent.
The total reported for Dáil and Seanad came to approximately 11.76 million words for the year, with committees accounting for approximately 11.55 million words. The written replies to parliamentary questions not taken on the floor of the Dáil account for a further approximately 12.73 million words of the Official Report.
Explore the word counts in the interactive visualisation below by hovering over the circles.
Parliamentary Questions
Parliamentary questions form a large part of parliamentary debates. In 2023, 51,870 questions and replies were published to the web, the third-highest total on record.
You can explore the questions in this interactive visualisation by hovering over areas in the chart to reveal information on questions asked by constituency, party, question type and the Department to which the questions are directed.
To get a more in-depth examination of questions, check out our PQ Explorer.
All data from the Oireachtas open data API.