DáilDex got a little better. Here’s how.

The header now puts search alongside an Explore menu organised around people, money, learning and reading. You can move from a representative’s record to a guide, Finance or an article without knowing which part of the website owns it. Result icons and labels help distinguish a person from a guide or a public record. The menus also make the current page easier to recognise.

Try a natural question such as ‘who is the Tánaiste?’ or ‘how does a Dáil vote work?’ Search shows page matches, people, articles and records. Open a result to read it, or choose Continue in Dex to turn the question into a new conversation. Go opens a draft you can edit; it does not silently send a question on your behalf. If Dex suggests clearer wording, you can still keep your original wording.

This matters because finding the right page and asking a question are often two stages of the same task. You should be able to start with either. We have also fixed the handoff that could fail on a full results page: a long list of matches no longer prevents Continue in Dex from opening your draft.

1. Use the header search, or open the full Search page.
2. Pick a result to read it. For an explanation, choose Continue in Dex, check the draft and send it when you are ready.
3. Use ↑ and ↓ to move through search choices, Enter to open a selected choice, and Escape to close the panel.

Try the new search

You can now ask three questions in Dex before giving us a name or email. Open the chat, write a question and see whether the answer helps. After that, a first name and email unlock the free pass with 50 messages a day. Uploads and some model choices need a pass earlier; Dex tells you when you reach that point.

We changed the order because asking someone to register before they have seen an answer makes the first visit harder than it needs to be. ‘What is the difference between a TD and a councillor?’ is a perfectly good place to begin. You should get to ask it while you are still deciding whether DáilDex is useful to you.

A free Dex pass and a signed-in DáilDex account serve different purposes. The pass lets you use the chat. Signing into an account is how you keep account-backed work and return to it across devices. The first three questions do not give you unlimited access to every model or the account features in Study.

1. Open Dex and type an Irish civic or political question.
2. Use the first answer to ask a follow-up, such as ‘show me a real example’ or ‘explain that more simply’.
3. When Dex asks for a free pass, follow the prompt. Sign in to an account when you want work available across devices.

Ask your first question

Type @ in the Dex composer to look up a TD, constituency, party, Bill or vote. Choose the matching item from the menu and keep writing. A selected tag gives Dex a specific identity to work with, rather than leaving it to infer which person, place or similarly named Bill you meant.

For example, tag your constituency and ask who represents it. Tag a TD and ask about their recent parliamentary questions. Tag a vote and ask what the division decided. For Bills, the selection identifies the Bill itself; for votes, it identifies the particular division. That distinction is useful when several votes happen during the passage of the same legislation.

The tags are resolved against the records available to DáilDex. They help make the question precise, but they do not guarantee that every requested detail is in our data. If a name or record does not appear, try more of its title, use the relevant public page, or ask Dex to explain what information it can find.

1. Type @ followed by part of a name or title, then select a match.
2. Write the question around the selected tag—for example, ‘What did this vote actually decide?’
3. For a tagged vote, try /split followed by the tag to ask for the party breakdown.

Try a tagged question · Find a Dáil vote

Dex has more ways to show parliamentary information as structured cards. A representative, constituency, Bill or division can be presented with relevant details and links, so you can inspect the record rather than having to extract every fact from a long paragraph. Party-split cards make it easier to compare how parties voted and look at departures from the party pattern.

A vote result needs context. A division might concern an amendment, a motion or a particular stage of a Bill. Winning that division does not necessarily mean a Bill has become law. We have continued connecting vote explanations to the specific question, its stage and the source record, including the motion or amendment text where it is available.

Use those cards as a route into the evidence. Ask ‘what happens next?’ if you need the procedure explained, and open the source if you need to quote or cite the result. A missing record should remain a missing record. An AI explanation can help you read the evidence, but it still needs checking before you rely on it in an assignment or a public claim.

1. Ask Dex about a tagged vote or Bill.
2. Read the label describing what was decided, as well as the Tá and Níl totals.
3. Open the linked division or official source before quoting the result.

Learn how to read a Dáil vote

Dex can now open with Your TDs this week, called Your Monday brief on Mondays. It draws on the last seven days of the parliamentary record available to us, showing votes and parliamentary questions for the relevant TDs. Signed-in readers can get the brief from their followed TDs. Otherwise, you can choose a constituency for this browser to remember.

The initial brief is assembled from recorded data. It does not need an AI response and does not spend a chat message. If you want help understanding it, use Ask Dex to walk me through it. That follow-up is a normal conversation request. The brief also makes room for a quiet week: no divisions during a recess should not be treated as proof that a member was absent or inactive.

We built this because a person’s record is easier to follow in a small, dated window than in a long list. It gives you a manageable starting point: these are the votes and questions, these are the dates, and these are the things you can investigate next. It is an on-site brief, separate from the individual email alerts you receive by following representatives.

1. Open a new Dex conversation and look for the weekly brief.
2. If asked, choose your constituency. That choice is saved in this browser.
3. Sign in and follow your TDs to use the followed-representative basis across devices.

See your weekly brief · Choose who to follow

Some explanations are easier to understand when you can try something. Dex can now build more interactive learning blocks: flip-card revision, myth-or-fact reveals, matching exercises, stages to put in order, and number-estimation challenges. These sit alongside the diagrams, comparisons, timelines and quizzes already used in its explainers.

Try ‘put the stages of a Bill in order’ or ‘give me flashcards on the difference between the Dáil and Seanad’. You can also type / to browse commands. /order, /match, /flashcards and /myths are useful starting points when you know the kind of activity you want. A quick activity is different from a full practice paper: use /test with a topic and level for that.

The purpose is to make you retrieve an idea, not simply read it again. Placing the stages in order exposes a different misunderstanding from recognising a correct definition. Dex chooses a format in response to the question, so every answer will not contain every type of activity. Generated questions and answers can still be wrong; use the source links and treat them as practice rather than an official exam paper.

1. Type / in Dex and browse the Study commands.
2. Try /order how a Bill becomes law or /flashcards parliamentary questions.
3. Ask for the source or a simpler explanation if an answer is unclear.

Try an interactive explanation

Dex explainers now have actions for saving to Study, copying as Markdown, sharing as an image and opening a focus view. Save to Study lets you choose an existing space or create a new one. Where the explainer has suitable revision material, it can carry cards into that space too. The save panel tells you what was saved and gives you a way to open it.

Sharing as an image is useful when the layout carries the explanation: a comparison, sequence or diagram can lose its meaning when flattened into a chat screenshot. The sharing panel lets you preview and download the image, with native sharing on browsers that support it. Copy as Markdown is the better choice when you want editable text or notes.

The same Save to Study idea now reaches public pages, including guides, TD pages and vote pages. A saved page keeps its source identity and links, with revision cards where the page supplies them. That creates a path from reading a real parliamentary record to revising it later, without asking you to rebuild the source list yourself.

1. Use Save to Study on a supported page or Dex explainer.
2. Choose a space, or create a new one named for the material.
3. Check the save confirmation. If you are signed out, the save lives in a guest desk on this device.

Open Study

We have brought the Learn guides into a consistent English and Irish reading structure. The subjects range from political titles and elections to Bills, courts, public spending and accountability. The work behind the pages also removes older duplicate versions, so the guide you read on the website and the material available to Study can come from the same content.

Selected guides now include examples from the parliamentary data. A guide to legislation can show Bills at their current stages; a guide to votes can point to a close division; a guide to parliamentary questions can connect the procedure to actual questions. These examples depend on the record available to us. In a quiet period, a page may use a wider dated window rather than pretend there was recent activity.

The end of a guide has a more useful next step. Go deeper can point to official reading, key terms, exam context or the next guide in a learning path, depending on the material. Choose your constituency in the closing prompt and some guides can connect the topic to your own TDs’ record. The reason for doing this is simple: knowing the definition of a parliamentary question is more useful when you can recognise one and read the answer.

1. Open a Learn guide in English or Irish.
2. Read any dated live example alongside the general explanation.
3. Use the self-check, Go deeper links and Save to Study action to continue with the material.

Browse the guides · Try the guide to Bills

You can now open Study as a guest and start keeping material in a desk on this device. You can create spaces and save supported pages or explainers without first opening an account. Study makes the storage boundary visible: guest work lives in this browser. Clearing its data or using a different device will not bring that work with you.

When you save something or return to the guest desk, Study offers a free account so the work can be kept across devices. The prompt can be dismissed. If you create an account through that flow, Study brings the guest work across. Account-backed tutoring, practice papers and marking still need sign-in, as do Classes and the Bill Explorer. The interface explains those requirements at the point you reach them.

Study also has This week in the Dáil, a dated collection built from available divisions, with explanations of what the vote stages decide and material you can add to a study space. Guest readers can see it too. This is a different view from the personal brief in Dex: it is a learning starting point about the week’s Dáil record rather than a report only on the TDs you follow.

1. Open Study and try a learning path or save a page into a guest space.
2. Use This week in the Dáil when you want a current record to study.
3. Create an account from the guest prompt when you want the desk available on another device. Check the confirmation that the work moved across.

Try the guest desk · Find a student starting point

Our recent follow changes put the choice closer to the record. TD and constituency pages, vote pages, relevant content and parts of Dex and Study can offer a way to follow the people you are reading about. The flow can use your signed-in account address, so an existing reader does not have to keep typing their email into another form.

If you are signing up by email, confirmation still matters. Open the confirmation email and follow its link before expecting alerts. The sample alert page lets you see the shape of an email before committing: a plain-English explanation, relevant context and a route back to the record. You can choose representatives and manage your alert preferences rather than accepting an undefined stream of updates.

Following remains free. Delivery depends on your preferences, the importance filter, the published daily cap and your subscription status. The on-site weekly brief does not switch on a weekly email digest. We want the follow prompts to explain the service clearly and appear when you have a reason to use it, while keeping the parliamentary record itself open to read.

1. Use Follow on a TD or constituency page, or go to the follow page.
2. Check the selected representatives. If you use an email signup, confirm through the email link.
3. Read the sample alert and use the management link in your emails to adjust preferences or unsubscribe.

Follow your representatives · Read a sample alert

Finance is another recent addition to the navigation. It brings together routes into revenue, spending, departments, debt and funds, committees and party finance, with a sources section to help you understand where figures come from. It gives public money a home beyond the Budget page, which is useful when your question is about an ongoing department or a published return rather than one Budget announcement.

Start from the Finance overview, choose the subject you need, then check the period, definition and source before comparing figures. An allocation, actual spending and a balance are different things. Available coverage depends on the published and reviewed source data; an empty or limited view is not a claim that the underlying amount is zero.

We have also removed the decorative side accent bars that appeared across many panels and tightened details in the header, result list and page layouts. Those changes are small beside the new tools, but they affect every visit. The job of the interface is to help you distinguish the useful choices and read the evidence comfortably.

1. Open Finance from Explore and choose a topic.
2. Read the date and measurement beside a figure, then inspect its source.
3. Use a guide or Dex when you need the terminology explained before comparing the numbers.

Explore Finance · See the Finance sources

Pick one real question. Search for it, read the closest guide and open a source linked from the explanation. If something still does not make sense, continue in Dex and ask about that specific point. Use a tag when you mean a particular TD, Bill or vote. Save the useful answer or page into Study, then try an activity that makes you recall what you learned.

That is the direction behind this update: fewer dead ends between discovering something, understanding it and keeping it. You can use DáilDex just to check a vote, just to read a guide, or just to ask a question. The extra connections are there for the moment you want to go further.

If a record looks wrong, a page is hard to use or a new feature gets in your way, tell us the page and what you were trying to do. Specific examples are what make the next improvement possible. You can reach the team at ray@daildex.com.

Start with a question · Send the team feedback