Search Hints

To View Contents

• To display contents of entire database:

• To display contents (proceedings) of a single day:

1. Select House
2. Select House Business - All for all business, Question time for Questions, Debate for business excluding Questions
3. Enter the date in both ‘Start date’ and ‘End date’ fields

• Click on Search button to display Search Screen
• Search terms can be entered in upper or lower case
• To search for an exact phrase enclose the phrase in single quotes
• Click on Search button at end of Search Screen or press ENTER to execute search
• To narrow search use a combination of search fields
• To move between search fields click on the field required or press TAB
• Use the operators described in Search Operators to broaden / narrow search.

The Debates of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann can be searched separately or together

• Select All to search all business
• Select Question time to restrict search to Oral and Written Answers to Questions.
• Select Debate to restrict search to business excluding Questions e.g. Bills, Motions, Estimates, Statements, Adjournment Debates etc.

Use these fields to locate contributions made within a particular date range or on a particular date.

• To search on a date range: enter dates in the Start Date and End Date fields
• To search after a specific date: enter date in Start Date field; leave End Date field blank
• To search before a specific date: enter date in End Date field; leave Start Date field blank
• To search on a single date: enter date in both the Start Date and End Date fields

The Heading search is based on the headings found in the printed volumes of Debates. This field is particularly useful when searching for one or more stages of a specific Bill (example of search: ‘finance bill 1996’ and ‘second stage’)

Use this field to locate contributions by a particular Member of the Houses as well as contributions by a non-Member who addressed the Houses. Note that the hit documents will include contributions by all Speakers to the debate – scroll down text if necessary to locate contribution by specified Speaker.

• Surname and firstname can be entered in any order. Surname only may also be entered
• To find references to a Speaker within a debate enter the Speaker’s name in the Word(s)/phrase in text field

Use this field to carry out a search on any word/phrase in database

• When searching both Houses simultaneously hit documents from the Dáil Debates are displayed first
• When the hit document is fully loaded reference details will be displayed
• Clicking on the Previous / Next buttons will display the text immediately before/after the hit document. Click on the web browser’s back button to return to hit document.
• When search term is entered in Word(s)/phrase in text field only, and the hit document is fully loaded, click on first hit word to locate first occurrence of search term.
• Use the web browser’s ‘find’ tool (open Edit menu and choose Find…) to locate additional occurrences of search term in document