Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and welcome Ms Vanessa Mulhall and Mr. Robert Nesirky. I am very interested in their proposals on shaping policy and processes in the European Union.

As a teacher I often heard people complain about schools and colleges being locked up for the entire summer. I wonder what the representatives of the National Youth Council would think were we to open the Parliament on a Saturday and allow a youth parliament, elected representatives from all over the country, similar to the elected Members of the Dáil, to scrutinise legislation and to bring forward their views on legislation. Do they feel they could engage with that process? It might be a radical idea but if we want to hear the views of young voices, that is where we would hear them. Too many people of my age make decisions for people of their age. I think that is wrong. I would be interested to hear their views on a youth parliament that would function as a parliament? Perhaps we should extend that to the wider European movement. I am not asking the members of the youth parliament to introduce legislation but merely to comment and appraise legislation.

I am 100% behind the idea of extending the vote to those aged 16 years. I might have a selfish interest in it, in the not too distant future but I certainly believe that 16 and 17 year olds should have the vote. I always found during my time in teaching that initially the class clown would be elected as the class representative, until people realised they did not want a joker but a person who could achieve things. Very soon, after the first quarter, there would be a request to rerun the ballot and the astute and tough negotiators would be elected. Admittedly I worked in further and not second level education.

I support the views of the witnesses on extending the vote to 16 and 17 year olds. We already tried this with Senator Fintan Warfield's Bill in the Seanad which, sadly, got nowhere. Have the witnesses personally, their extended friends or the National Youth Council started a lobbying campaign to ensure that we extend the franchise in local government and presidential elections? I do not see any reason that we should not have people of 16 and 17 deciding on their local councillors.

I am particularly concerned about the focus in Europe on the economic aspect of the Single Market. The European project has a much wider brief. For many years, I have felt that the European project has been taken over by the bureaucrats to a certain degree. I also feel that governments go to Europe and negotiate particular things, and then come back and say Europe has imposed something on them and they have no choice. The politicians say it is not their fault and that they should not lose their seats as they are only doing what Europe told them. Do the witnesses feel the same way as I do? All politicians, local and national, should step up to the plate and say they have negotiated something and they agree with it. They should explain why they agree rather than trying to fob it off.

My colleagues mentioned the desire of Europe to integrate military issues, particularly in respect of defence. Why have we not integrated police forces in respect of drugs and human trafficking in particular? Would the witnesses prioritise the integration of police forces and the sharing of intelligence or would they go down the defence route?

Going back to the social issues, migration is a massive problem for Europe at the moment. I have been out to Sicily to see it first hand. I am deeply concerned that, of those who are taking these horrendous journeys across Africa particularly, and coming from Bangladesh as well and facing the perils of the Mediterranean, close to 95% are economic migrants. Mr. Nesirky referred to taking responsibility for this issue and doing something in the countries of origin. I have brought it up in Europe and here. The likes of the big sports companies, for example, a large company in Meath, relocated to China. We do not pay any less for the product that is now manufactured in China than we did when it was manufactured in Meath. Clearly, the company is making a super-normal profit on cheap labour. The same would be true of a company in Donegal that manufactured t-shirts and moved to Morocco to get labour at a fraction of the price. Would the witnesses use the tax system to harmonise pricing and restore some of the funding that, for the want of a better description, is being plundered out of these cheap economies back into those economies to educate and train the people?

I thank the witnesses for taking the time to engage with the committee. I would like to see them far more involved not just in youth affairs, but in everything. After all, the legislation we pass in these Houses will affect them in a very short time.