Croissants, beer and votes in Brussels

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column with Dara Bradley

Voting isn’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to our MEPs.

But, in between eating croissants and drinking Belgian beer, it’d be nice to think that our MEPs are voting in the European Parliament when they’re over on the Continent.

After all, we send them to Europe at great expense to represent our interests. Voting is one way they do that.

Except, keeping track of which way MEPs vote and how often they vote can be a bit of a drag. Even the political anoraks couldn’t be bothered.

Thanks then to the good folk at Votewatch.eu who keep track of our MEPs voting records for us.

The website is bursting with data; it has too much of it. It has even gone to the trouble of ranking our MEPs, in terms of their participation in roll-call votes since the last election, in 2009.

You’ll be glad to know that none of the three Connacht/Ulster MEPs ranked as the worst of Ireland’s 12 representatives in terms of participating in votes.

Fianna Fáil’s Pat the Cope Gallagher has the worst voting participation record of the three, at 87.94%. He’s ranked ninth of the 12 Paddy MEPs.

Next came Fine Gael’s Jim Higgins, whose participation in roll-call votes is 89.17%, according to the website. That’s a middle-of-the-road seventh ranking out of 12.

The west’s top voter was Independent Marian Harkin. She voted in 92.35% of votes, which put her ranked in the top tier of Irish MEPs, at fourth.

Of course, like with most things, it’s the quality rather than the quantity of voting that matters. But it’s handy to know the frequency all the same.

MEPs, go figure

The same website gives you other little nuggets of information about the MEPs’ activities since last time they came looking for your vote. It gives an analysis of what exactly they’ve been up to these past five years (albeit in crude statistical format). Here is the data of our three MEPs in the west for those of you that don’t have access to Votewatch.eu:

Marian Harkin: One report drafted; three opinions drafted; 197 reports amended; 204 parliamentary questions asked; 12 written declarations signed; and 14 motions for resolutions signed.

Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher: One report drafted; two opinions drafted; 49 reports amended; 186 parliamentary questions asked; zero written declarations signed; and 10 motions for resolutions signed.

Jim Higgins: one report drafted; zero opinions drafted; 79 reports amended; 544 parliamentary questions asked; three written declarations signed; and one motion for resolutions signed.

The site gives us a caveat about Higgins and says that he has either been president or vice-president of the parliament or leader of one of the political groupings and the participation figures may be influenced by the way they exercise those duties.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.