Oireachtas Bills 1997 – 2010

We frequently hear talk of how much (or how little) legislation is passed by the Oireachtas. We also hear about Bills languishing at Committee Stage for years. Unfortunately the Oireachtas website isn’t very useful for discerning any patterns or where Bills are, or when exactly they were introduced. In an attempt to make this much clearer, we (excellent Alexia is keen to help, and we need more help from readers) are going to try and build a spreadsheet that at least contains the current state of affairs, and included all Bills introduced since 1997. You can see what we’ve pieced together so far, and it is by no means complete or exhaustive.

Oireachtas bills 2010, 2009

If you want to help, please get in touch. Future applications would include using the Google Charts API to map legislative processes digitally.

11 thoughts on “Oireachtas Bills 1997 – 2010”

  2. I suggest you add a column indicating whether a bill is a private members bill (PMB) or not. I know it’s in the title, but it would be nice to be able to sort them between Government bills and PMBs.

  5. the table you have collated might give the impression of a certain legislative activism that is foreign to Oireachtas Members. Some of the bills, particularly PMB, never get past 2nd Stage, or just about make Committee Stage in either room, and then fail to cross to the other chamber; eg Student Support BIll.

    If anything PMB, to some degree is pandering to local issues, or a knee jerk reaction to an issue that might be inthe public’s line of vision. Who can argue with a representative who says, ‘we were so concerned about issue X, that we introduced a PMB, and you shot it down minister’. The mortality rate of bills is secondary to being able to say that one has introduced it.

    Might be interesting to see how things have worked out for the Government Legislation Programme for Summer Session 2010 – http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Taoiseach_and_Government/Government_Legislation_Programme/

    Some would say that the Seanad would only love a bit more legislation ….god knows they are trying to find things to fill the time…

  6. this is how ibm does it http://manybills.researchlabs.ibm.com/ !

    been thinking about trying to do something similar/simpler with this to show when bill (promised) started, stage, enacted etc?

    http://simile-widgets.googlecode.com/svn/timeline/trunk/src/webapp/examples/test_example3/test_example3.html

    you can run these timeline or gantnt charts right off the spreadsheet,
    http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gadgetgallery.html
    listed under project

  7. i tried the spreadsheet with the google gantt chart
    http://dublinstreams.com/timeline/billsgantt.html

    look a copy of under sessions to see how i had to rearrange it
    http://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=tFCphWcaSA55H836uluOvtA&hl=en_GB#gid=0

    I split the stages 5/100 into 20% chunks,to show the gantt progress i wonder the time taken and intensity of each stage

    Qs.
    a bill has to completed in 1 session?, or else it dropped, Yes/No
    Does anyone have definite dail sessions dates for each year back to X. How many are there Autumn spring Summer when they usually roughly start and end?

    the links to the info needed
    http://www.oireachtas.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocId=-1&CatID=59&m=b
    http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Taoiseach_and_Government/Government_Legislation_Programme/

  9. redid http://dublinstreams.com/timeline/billsgantt.html
    making a bit more sense now, gathering session dates in this spreadsheet http://spreadsheets2.google.com/ccc?key=tFyrjdONlJRn0knr7kVADXg&hl=en_GB#gid=0
    i figure that bills initiated during dail summer break is referred to as ‘recess session’ july to september.
    need individual enacting/end dates of bills and stages trying to scrap info from pages like this
    http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=15347&&CatID=59
    if not do have to do it by hand
    is there anywhere else where the initiating date and enacting date of bills are side by side?

  11. I’ve just finished for all bills since 1997 – just need about an hour more formatting, which I hope to do over the weekend

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