Collection of Manually Transcribed Audio Samples from the Irish House of Representatives (Dáil Éireann).
Some themes covered are the economy, environment, housing crisis, and education in Ireland. This dataset may be used by anyone wishing to test a speech-to-text transcription model on a dataset of many Irish accents in the English language. There are a large number of accents in the Republic of Ireland and therefore it is unlikely that all have been covered in this dataset. However, this serves as a good benchmark
There are five clips selected from a representative of each constituency in the Republic of Ireland. That is, 39 constituencies x 5 clips to make a total of 195 clips. The clips are intentionally cut to ensure that the beginning and end of the sentence is not cut off, and thus the full reference transcription for each clip is represented in the audio.
Some rules were applied in order to standardise the transcription and thus make the evaluation (for example, WER) more accurate.
These rules are as follows:
- All text is converted to lowercase
- Contractions are applied where possible (for example, "I will" to "I'll")
- Heifens are removed and joint words are separated (for example, "u-turn" becomes "u turn")
- Numbers are written in alphabetic form rather than numeric
The clips have been extracted from deliberative discussions that have taken place within the last four years within Dáil Éireann. These clips have been uploaded to Youtube by Video Parliament Ireland, therefore much thanks is given to this channel for providing an ease of access to the relevant speeches.
Dublin Bay North: Richard Bruton
Dublin Bay South: Ivana Bacik
Dublin Bay Central: Paschal Donohoe
Dublin Fingal: Louise O’Reilly
Dublin Mid-West: Gino Kenny
Dublin North-West: Róisín Shortall
Dublin Rathdown: Neale Richmond
Dublin South-Central: Joan Collins
Dublin South-West: Colm Brophy
Dublin West: Leo Varadkar
Dún Laoghaire: Jennifer Carroll MacNeill
Carlow-Kilkenny: Kathleen Funchion
Kildare North: Bernard Durkan
Kildare South: Patricia Ryan
Laois-Offaly: Barry Cowen
Longford-Westmeath: Sorca Clarke
Louth: Peter Fitzpatrick
Meath East: Helen McEntee
Meath West: Damien English
Wexford: Verona Murphy
Wicklow: John Brady
Clare: Violet-Anne Wynne
Cork East: Pat Buckley
Cork North-Central: Mick Barry
Cork North-West: Michael Creed
Cork South-Central: Micheál Martin
Cork South-West: Holly Cairns
Kerry: Norma Foley
Limerick City: Brian Leddin
Limerick County: Niall Collins
Tipperary: Martin Browne
Waterford: Mary Butler
Cavan-Monaghan: Heather Humphreys
Donegal: Pearse Doherty
Galway East: Anne Rabbitte
Galway West: Catherine Connolly
Mayo: Rose Conway-Walsh
Roscommon-Galway: Claire Kerrane
Sligo-Leitrim: Marian Harkin