Ms Vanessa Mulhall:

I was one of the young people who attended the debate in the Seanad on voting at age 16. Even though I am not 16, I was left feeling really disappointed at the fact that it did not happen. The NYCI has set up a committee of young people from all around the country, both under and over 16, to lobby on the issue. I would stress the fact that anyone can vote for anybody. Young people can make their own decisions on who they are going to vote for. There is no wrong person to vote for. If they have their views, so be it. Older people can vote for who they want. Young people should be able to do the same.

The idea of having a youth parliament is an amazing one. We do have the comhairle and we have the structured dialogue, Young Voices, which has a reach of an awful lot of young people all around the country. They have great engagements, which is unbelievable because when a lot of people talk about young people they say they are not engaged but when we go to consultations, the empowerment and passion to deal with political issues is amazing in terms of the energy that comes out of the room. What young people want to do is engage with policy makers and decision makers on what is happening and what is affecting them. It is what we want to do.

The NYCI, through working with European partners, has developed a youth check, seic óg in Irish. Basically, that is an impact assessment tool for policy and legislation that is designed in the Parliament. We designed these from BOBF, Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, from the five national outcomes. There is a list of questions that would be checked against policies. If the policy went against any of the questions that came out of BOBF, it would mean that the policy would have to be re-examined because it would have a negative effect on young people. The whole idea of having a parliament for young people to attend is an amazing one because it would show at first hand what young people have to say and why our views need to be heard. We are talking about the future of Europe. The future is tomorrow; it is not years ahead. Tomorrow, the next day and the day after that is the future. That is where we come from on that.