Ms Anne O'Donnell:

I thank the committee for inviting me here today. As other witnesses will speak about older young people, I will confine my comments to children and young people under the age of 18 and the importance of their capacity to engage in decision-making on issues that affect their lives.

I hope committee members are aware that two weeks ago, we launched the national strategy on children and young people's participation in decision-making. We are the first country in Europe and, very likely, the first in the world to have developed such a strategy. It is very heavily influenced by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the EU convention and other conventions. The purpose of the strategy is to ensure children have an opportunity in their individual and collective lives to have a say in everything that affects them. No country knows better than ours what happened in bygone and not-so-bygone days when children were not listened to. All the major abuse scandals in Ireland have one thing in common, which is that no one listened to children. It is a very important step that the Government recognises the need to leave that past behind and to listen to and act on the voices of children and young people.

Empowering children is as important as protecting them. That is one of the most important aspects of Article 12 of the UN convention, which is about the rights of the child. Children have a right to be heard, to be listened to, and to have a say in decisions that affect their lives. There is virtually nothing in Irish society that does not affect the lives of children. I challenge the committee members to think of any policy or decision that would not do so in some way. In the Department's citizen participation unit, we oversee structures like Comhairle na nÓg, local child and youth councils and Dáil na nÓg. We do vast numbers of consultations with children and young people and engage in all forms of dialogue. We have a support team that ensures we spread this work as far as we can.

I wish to highlight a number of issues of relevance to children's voices and their eventual participation in civic engagement and in voting. In page 7 of the document I have given to members, they will see evidence from research all over the world which suggests that enabling children to have a voice in decision-making supports their active citizenship from an early age. That is critical to our discussion today. It makes absolutely no sense to think that a young person is going to wake up on his or her 18th birthday and suddenly feel like civically engaging. If young people have not been engaged before that age and do not feel that having a voice in some way makes them an active citizen with some kind of influence in their everyday lives, why would they want to bother engaging with society? There is no light bulb moment at 18. There is ample evidence on this matter, with which Mr. Doorley will be very familiar, particularly from Maurice Devlin, who has stated, "citizenship practice is learned through the lived experience of belonging and participating, of listening and speaking, of being valued and included". That is backed up by any amount of research on the matter.

In preparing for the national strategy, the Department commissioned a number of pieces of research, one of which measured the impact of participation and decision-making among children and young people who had taken part in projects such as Comhairle na nÓg and different consultations on mental health and on topical issues such as alcohol. The findings indicate that even though young people often feel disconnected from political debate, they are interested in playing a part in decision-making and in society. Just because they are not interested in voting does not mean they are not interested in taking part in decision-making. The two things are not necessarily the same. It is important for a commission such as this one to take that into account. If more young people are to be encouraged to vote, people need to listen to them and hear why they are not voting.

Another important issue is the self-realisation of children and young people. In order that children and young people feel engaged and part of society when they are young, we need to stop seeing them as the adults of tomorrow and start seeing them as the citizens of today. We need to stop focusing on what they will be like when they are adults and starting looking at what their lives are like and how they can participate today. Children have a huge amount to contribute and need to feel that what they contribute today is valued. There are many good examples of that.

Research from Martin Geoghegan in UCC interestingly showed that although many of the current participants in Comhairle na nÓg said they did not have much interest in politics or voting, 86% of past participants - young people now aged about 20 or 21 - rated being involved in decision-making when they were younger as having a positive impact on their understanding of the political system, while 81% said they felt their experience would have a positive impact on them voting. That is very good news for building a stronger civic society. These findings concur with research conducted in the UK, where there was a very low participation rate among young voters. The UK research indicated that involving young people in decision-making makes them much more likely to feel they might eventually vote.

Another issue that arises a lot in our consultations with young people is the fact that they feel stereotyped by the adult world. The adult world frequently comments that young people are disengaged and have no interest in being engaged. The evidence is not there to back that up, however. Young people themselves are interested in engaging. If one looks at social media, they are actively engaging all the time in campaigns and expressing their views. The recent referendum is a strong example whereby young people, both under 18 and over, were very engaged in campaigning. The vote itself proved how, when young people get involved, they do make a difference to the eventual outcome.

In a consultation we conducted for a youth structure dialogue, another key theme was that young people commented on the fact that they feel stereotyped by adults. They also said that they do not feel they are listened to by Deputies and councillors. They do not feel that politicians are interested in listening to their views. It is important, therefore, for the political system to recognise that. Politicians are the spokespeople for the political system. Young people are telling us they need to feel they are listened to by politicians. That will help them to feel they are valued and that it is worth their while taking part in decision making.

Our experience of working actively with young people and children on a regular basis is that they are interested in topics and issues of social concern. They are particularly interested in a fairer society, so I would urge the political system and the commission to take heed of that. They should try to find ways of linking into what it is that makes children and young people engage in their own worlds as a way of making them more interested in engaging in civic society when they reach voting age.