Chronology of Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas

I was often asked for information current and former members of the Houses of the Oireachtas, the parliament of Ireland.

In fact, Members are very important entities when modelling information systems architecture in parliaments. Any member may be a member of one or more parliaments, Houses, committees. Members may vote in divisions, ask questions, propose amendments and motions, hold office as speaker, cabinet minister, or minister of state, committee chairman, to name but a few roles.

In my case. while the information was in the public domain, there was no readily accessible database of the Members of Dáil Éireann (1919–) and Seanad Éireann (1922–).

As part of the Historical Debates project, a database was created to assist searching the official report Web site, however, it was not available on-line.

We managed to transfer the data to a mysql relation database, and and it to the Houses of the Oireachtas Web site: Chronology of Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

The database is updated constantly, and new events occur, or as historical information becomes available. This means that the data integrity is maintained, an essential building block for future developments.

The simple relation database includes the following data, and can handle members who change houses, parties, constituencies and panels:

• House
  • Dáil
    • 1st Dáil 1919…
      • Constituencies
        • Deputies
    • 30th Dáil 2007–
  • Seanad
    • 1st Seanad 1922…
      • Panels
        • Senators
    • 23rd Seanad 2007–
• Members
  • Photograph
  • Date of Birth/ death
  • brief curriculum vitae
  • Profession
  • Address
  • email
  • Web site
  • Houses
    • Dáil – Deputy 
      • Constituency…
      • Party…
    • Seanad – Senator 
      • Panel…
      • Party…