Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Tairgim: "Go léifear an Bille an Dara hUair anois."

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This Bill sets out to amend the Constitution to allow the voting age for presidential elections to be lowered to 16 and for the voting franchise in such elections to be extended to citizens in the North of Ireland and to the Irish diaspora throughout the world. These recommendations were put forward by the Constitutional Convention and should now be put before our citizens.

Approximately 70 million people around the world claim to be of Irish descent. The Irish influence abroad has been important right down through history. Perhaps the first important impact of Ireland on the world stage was when we sent our learned monks to educate those on the European Continent and further afield during the Dark Ages. Right across Europe, the Irish kept the flame of education and knowledge alive while feudal landlords on the Continent burned down places of learning. When Europeans began arriving on the American Continent, many of those who travelled were of Ulster Scots tradition. Those who made their way across the Atlantic did so to escape penal laws imposed by the British on Ireland which discriminated against dissenting religions such as Presbyterianism. Many of the founding fathers of the United States were of Ulster heritage and it is even believed that some spoke with a distinctive Ulster accent.

The next wave of migration from Ireland was spurred on by the disastrous effects of the potato Famine of 1848. From about 1850 onwards, over 1 million people fled Ireland and hunger to find new homes in the United States, Canada, Australia and Britain. Once the floodgates opened, more and more Irish began to leave and it became the cultural norm for all children of a family, except the child who was to inherit the farm, to leave Ireland as soon as they got the opportunity. At one stage New York was a predominantly Irish city, as was Boston and other cities across the United States. To this day, residents in parts of Newfoundland in Canada speak with a distinctly Irish accent. Since the Famine, emigration from Ireland has become part of the fabric of life in many ways. While the early years were dominated by the need to escape hunger and disease, later emigration offered the chance to earn a living and proper wages. Bustling industrial cities around the world were built by Irish labour. The later part of the 20th century saw Irish people emigrate because the opportunities for educated young people were practically non-existent in Ireland. When the economic crash occurred in 2008, the flow from the country returned once again and thousands of our young people have now set up home in Australia, Canada and even the Gulf States.

For all the millions of Irish who have emigrated from these shores in the past two centuries, there has never been political representation for them at home. The official policy of the State could be described as "out of sight, out of mind". While at several points throughout our history it has been money sent from abroad which has helped keep our economy afloat, those who were sending the money home were never represented here politically. This Bill offers us an opportunity to change that.

At the partition of Ireland, Irish voices North of the Border were silenced. Little opportunity was given to Irish people living in this country to have a voice in the institutions of this State just because they were living north of the Border. The former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, could not vote in her own election. The impact this had on both parts of this country has been profound. In the North, the Nationalist community was rampantly discriminated against by a Unionist ascendency. Nationalists could not get equal access to jobs or housing and were effectively ghettoised in their own country. The State south of the Border did little or nothing to help this situation. It effectively ignored those living only a few miles up the road and abandoned them to sectarian rule. The impact of Northern voices being removed from the southern State has been damaging. The Protestant tradition in Ulster had a proud history of enlightenment, spawning important figures in science, engineering and revolutionary politics through the United Irishmen. The hegemonic State which took hold in Ireland post-1922 might not have happened if we had had the dissenting voices of Ulster properly represented in these Chambers. This Bill proposes to extend the voting franchise for the presidential election to the Six Counties. Some people will say that this is the thin end of the wedge and I would unashamedly say, "Yes, it is the thin end of a wedge". I and my party would argue that all Irish people should be represented in this Parliament and in Áras an Uachtaráin and representation in Áras an Uachtaráin is an important step on that journey.

We need to stop paying lip-service to young people and start putting faith in them. The youth of today are very switched on to what is happening not just in their own country, but in the wider world. They have a level of access to information unlike that of any previous generation. Therefore, it is a progressive step to lower the voting age in presidential elections to 16. Voter turnout is something I am sure every politician in this Chamber is concerned about and, unfortunately, some of the lowest turnout levels are among young people. A positive step in encourage voting is to develop a pattern of voting among our young. We can get them registered to vote while they are still in school and this should tie into a wider programme of discussing politics and political activity in schools.

In the past three weeks, I received two questionnaires from two secondary schools in County Sligo. I do not know if other Deputies and Senators received those questionnaires but they were drawn up by the students. I met and spoke with the students in one of the schools last year and got a tremendous response from them. They showed a keenness to learn more about politics and the political system. In the questionnaire they sent to me, they asked very simple but quite profound questions. When I thought about it, I did not just fill in the answers to the questions or tick the boxes very quickly. The questions prompted me to question whether I had enough respect for those young people who sent me the questionnaire. It relates to whether we consider young people enough in this Parliament, whether we are really concerned about the younger generation, whether we welcome or fear the voices of younger people being put forward and whether we think young people should have a hand in the process of elections and politics in this country. If we were to answer "Yes" to those questions and if we truly respect those young secondary school students, we would have no hesitation in reducing the voting age to 16 initially for presidential elections and subsequently for general elections.

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