Contact Details
Anne Robinson
Editor of Debates
Office of the Houses of the Oireachtas
Leinster House
Dublin 2
Ireland
Tel:+353 (0) 16183245
Fax:+353 (0) 16184110
Email:
editor@oireachtas.ie
Website:
http://www.irlgov.ie/
Tithe an Oireachtais
Official Report
The Debates Office is responsible for publication of the Official Report, the authoritative record of proceedings of the Houses of the Oireachtas and parliamentary committees. The office is staffed by the Editor of Debates, three Deputy Editors, seven Assistant Editors, 40 Parliamentary Reporters and nine administrative staff. Since 1993, the proceedings have been recorded by technicians and transcribed by reporters.
The current staff are graduates in a wide range of disciplines and a large proportion have postgraduate degrees. They are required to have excellent language skills and a sound knowledge of public affairs, both national and international. They must also be able to recognise and understand references by Members on a wide range of subjects, political, historical, scientific, etc. Their job is demanding, requiring great attention to detail and an ability to work long hours during busy periods in the parliamentary calendar.
Staff of the Debates Office are conscious of the importance of their work in compiling the record of parliamentary proceedings and take pride in the independent and professional service offered to Members and others within the public service, the media, professional bodies, interest groups and the wider public. In recent years the office has developed a good relationship with colleagues in other parliamentary bodies in these islands and beyond. The Editor has hosted visits by parliamentary reporting staff from more than a dozen countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North America. Through membership of the recently established British-Irish Parliamentary Reporting Association it is intended to develop these contacts further by arranging reciprocal visits by staff.
The deployment of staff within the office is decided by the Editor. On a typical day, one team of reporters will be assigned to the Dáil and another to the Seanad. The members of the team will take turns to spend 10 minutes in the Chamber and keep a log of speakers and business transacted. These segments of the debates are known as 'takes'. The first round of the day may consist of five-minute takes. On leaving the Chamber, the reporter collects the relevant tape from the sound technician and returns to his or her workstation to transcribe it. A ten-minute take should be completed in two hours and marked ready for the Editors.
An assistant editor will read a take on screen and make any changes necessary. It is then marked 'edited' and is available to the Editor and Deputy Editor, who check the 'run in' with the preceding and following takes to ensure there is no gap or overlap, collate the takes in groups of ten and send them to the printers. The material is also formatted for publication on the Internet.
Once completed, takes are available via the office intranet to Members and others with intranet access. The debates of both Dáil and Seanad are available to the general public the following day on the Oireachtas website.
Reporters and editors also deal each week with hundreds of written answers to parliamentary questions tabled by Deputies. The material, which is supplied electronically by the Departments, is collated and checked by the reporting and editorial staff for inclusion in the daily edition of the Official Report.
Since becoming available on the Internet, the readership of the Official Report has greatly increased. The office regularly receives correspondence from people all over the world who have accessed the debates on the Oireachtas website. This is particularly so since the launch on the website of the historical project, the debates of both Houses of the Oireachtas since 1919. This provides an invaluable source of information on the issues and attitudes of the political establishment since the first Dáil.
