Seeing The Trees ... And The Wood

Aspects of constituency and party affiliation crystallise helpful characteristics but it seems the main factor for consideration is still the Deputy. Regardless of party affiliation or location in Ireland, Dáil Deputies are their own agents in tabling questions to a line Minister and their provenance or party whip does not necessarily act as predictor of the type of questions asked or their content.

Is there value in considering another dimension of the “Death Star”, the Department to which the question is addressed? This tree map aggregates the questions asked into the 21 distinct topic areas of the Departments. A tree map containing all 160-odd Deputies quickly becomes unreadable but limiting numbers of Deputies (in this case by the top ten Deputies by number of questions asked) highlights some interesting points. For example, although the top Deputies for questions to the Departments of Finance and Agriculture were Opposition spokespersons on those topics, as one might reasonably expect, other Departments do not display the same pattern. Indeed, a Government Deputy, Bernard Durkan, dominates the questioning of many Departments despite not formally holding a “portfolio”, and Independent Deputies or members of smaller groups, including Deputies Michael Healy-Rae and Clare Daly, rank quite high in numbers of questions asked.

Moreover, patterns of interest appear to emerge when considering the submissions of all Deputies. For example, Deputy Durkan’s questions to the Department of Justice dwarf the numbers submitted by others; although his numbers dwarf those of others in general, this pattern is not necessarily repeated by him across other Departments. Other Deputies also appear to have “favourite” Departments in this manner.

Aggregating by Department has benefits so it can be applied to the initial packed bubble chart to make the Department proportions clearer. Although there is potential for over- or understatement, such a visualisation makes it clear, for example, that the Departments dealing with health and agriculture make up a big chunk of the overall number of questions. What about question content?