KildareStreet.com website charges users in the Dáil

Leinster House staff who have shunned the Oireachtas’ own website in favour of a rival site run by a member of the public are now being charged for using the research resource.

KildareStreet.com hosts transcripts from the Houses of Oireachtas, documenting everything from Dáil speeches to committee contributions.

While KildareStreet.com was free to use up until this week, those visiting with IP addresses originating from Leinster House are now to be charged a subscription to help pay for the cost of running the site. It will continue to be free for the majority of the public, but donations are encouraged to keep the resource online.

While the information offered is available for free on the Oireachtas’ own website — oireachtas.ie — KildareStreet.com has become an attractive alternative for politicians, their staff and journalists.

Unlike the Oireachtas’ site, KildareStreet.com provides user-friendly features such as email alerts informing users when certain phrases are used or when specific TDs speak, while also allowing visitors to the site to search transcripts.

John Handelaar, who runs KildareStreet.com, has revealed that 17% of the site’s traffic comes from within Leinster House, and that visitors from IP addresses within the building make up 3.2% of all unique users of the site. Users from within Leinster House stay on the site for an average of seven minutes, compared to fewer than two for other users.

Mr Handelaar said the site encountered difficulties in September 2012 when the Oireachtas changed the format in which it released its information, and it took him six months to rebuild KildareStreet.com.

“It now takes twice as long as it used to in order to update the site. I can’t afford to do this for nothing,” he said.

He said that to meet running costs and ensure the information is freely available to the public, the site will now require paid subscriptions from “those representatives who use it to do their jobs and get paid to do so by us”.

Subscriptions for those based in Leinster House will cost a maximum of €33 a month, depending on usage.

The idea for KildareStreet.com came some 11 years ago when Mr Handelaar moved to Cork and wanted to find out who his local TDs and councillors were. Unable to find a convenient site with this information, he developed a site from which KildareStreet.com evolved.

“It needed doing and no one had done it yet,” said Mr Handelaar.

He said that, with the exception of one complaint on social media, the idea has been well received and a “handful” of subscriptions have been bought.