Mr. James Doorley:

I thank the Deputy. We have worked over many years to encourage young people to vote and register to vote. We get calls from young people during every election and referendum campaign who may have naturally assumed they were already registered to vote, that there was a system which they were on and they could just turn up at polling stations to vote. Lots of young people lose out.

Thankfully, because of the good work done at local level by our members, we get many young people registered. We have 54 voluntary organisations working with young people around the country and some of them, such as USI, do amazing work on college campuses. The system is set up in such a way as to make it hard for young people to register. The criticism is based on the old model that people were born, raised and lived in one area for their entire life and everybody knew them. We live in a very different Ireland now where people move around. The age of 18 is a bad age to get people on the register because a lot of young people are moving away to college, work or training.

Our experience has been quite frustrating. I acknowledge the great work that is done by staff in local authorities, but the system is not set up to support young people to get on the register. We welcome the preregistration process which would allow young people aged 16 and 17 to register. That might be a better age at which to encourage young people to get on the electoral register. There would have to be work done by local registration authorities to ensure that happens.

I do not know if it is a global phenomenon, but it is certainly an Irish phenomenon that we tend to leave things until we need to do them. We always find there is a huge rush for young people to get on the register. The 2020 election was phenomenal. In my experience, the numbers of young people who wanted to register were much higher, as was the case for the referendums with which we are all very familiar. There was a huge interest in them among young people. The system-----