Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament The Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad What Has Been Done and Developments

Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad What was the Parliament’s vision  Create an electronic database of Parliamentary debate records from the foundation of the state ( )  Verified Accuracy level of %  Production on DVD Internet

Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad The Project Details –800+ paper volumes of parliamentary debates Approx 1,100 pages per volume 880,000+ pages Some Irish text Approx 820 Million Words –Required:- Data capture NOT scanned images Comprehensive searching capability Accuracy level at least % (less than 1 character per 20,000 characters)

Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad Early Decisions –XML to be used as the data format –Consolidate members parliamentary career over all offices held Allow topic based searching Date based searching Link Debate on legislation to legislation as enacted

Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad What has achieved  A web based Historic Debate Record - Data Capture project, largest corpus of parliamentary debate record in the world The statistics are staggering:  The full text of eighty four (84) years of parliamentary debates  One million (1,000,000) Web pages  On paper, the Official Report of the Parliamentary Debates consists of 729 volumes, which contain an average of 1,500 pages per volume, and would occupy 150 feet of shelf space.  If you were to buy the entire collection of Parliamentary Debates in bound volumes, the cost would be in the region of €750,000.

Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad What has been Done…Continued.  Started in 1998, using the then new but now accepted standard technology XML (xXtensible Markup Language)  complete historic record from  There are now approximately ½ million hits to site per month  3 rd July 2003 saw the launch of the DVD at a cost of €25

Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad The Results and uses  In providing the Parliamentary Debates on the Web together with a powerful search engine and a chronology of Members since 1919, members of the public will have full easy access to the debates on the the Internet  In providing the Parliamentary Debates on DVD members of the public will have full easy access to the debates on their own PCs, without having to log on to the Internet, or searching through hundreds of bound volumes.

Parliamentary Debate Record of the Irish Parliament, Dáil and Seanad The Benefits Politicians, Journalists Government Departments and Public Servants at all levels Academics and Students Lawyers Diplomats Lobbyists Economists Now have the Official Report avilable on both the Web and DVD