Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Joan Collins, Cronin, Nash and Ó Cathasaigh, and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, for their contributions to the debate. Bizarrely, everybody seems to be in favour of it but the Bill is not progressing, so that is how this House works. I have some measure of understanding of the Minister of State’s wish to delay this to 2023, although I will not say that is fair enough. One would imagine from what the Minister of State was saying that if this passed tonight, we would have a referendum in a couple of weeks time and everything would be done and dusted. The reality is that if this Bill passed here today, it would have to go to pre-legislative scrutiny in committee anyway, and that debate and discussion that the Minister of State said is essential could be had in the committee of the Oireachtas, rather than it being at an electoral commission and then being presented to us. We could actually have the debate and the discussion in the committee of this House, where we could tease out all of these issues and talk about it. That would take a process of a number of months to work through, if it happened, and it would then have to go through Committee Stage before coming back to the Dáil for Report Stage, and it would then have to go through the Seanad. There would be a lot of consideration and a lot of discussion in regard to the Bill if that were to happen, but that is not the way it is going.

In researching for this debate, I found out that in 2015 the Government at the time committed to holding a referendum to reduce the voting age to 16, as did the first report of the Convention on the Constitution in 2013, although, of course, that did not happen. The same Government allowed a similar Bill to today’s Bill to die on Committee Stage, so it did not happen on that occasion either. I am not saying that is going to happen with this Bill and I will be working to make sure it does not happen. I take the Minister of State at his word that it is not going to happen to this Bill, but time will tell.

It was interesting in researching for this Bill to find there was a lot of similar discussion in 1973, when the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18, and that this had been the policy of the parties since the 1960s. In the debate that took place at that time in the House, all the parties were clamouring to say it was their idea, so there was no real discussion in regard to it. It was a Fianna Fáil Government that put forward the referendum and Fine Gael and Labour were also saying they had put this forward in the 1960s. It is obviously how things work and how the process goes along.

There was talk about tokenism. To a certain extent, having young people in the Seanad was very good, positive and strong, but it is also a bit tokenistic when we say they can be in the Seanad but we are not going to allow them to vote yet. As always, I am qualifying everything I am saying with the fact the Minister of State is saying this Bill will be read a Second Time in 12 months time, in June 2023. Hopefully, that will be the case and I will work towards making sure it is the case and will progress to Committee Stage. There will be a long process before Committee Stage takes place, with hearings and everything else, which is important. However, for the National Youth Council and young people, the message they will take from this debate today is that it has been delayed to next year, which basically adds a couple of years to it, if it goes ahead. Even if the electoral commission decides to do it and recommends it over the next year, and we will see how that develops, it will still be a number of years before it is processed. It will still have to come back to this House, go through this House and go through the Seanad, having gone through pre-legislative scrutiny in the committee. It will still be a long-drawn-out process with plenty of opportunity for debate and discussion.

The Minister of State raised three points on the barriers to this Bill going through.

Two of them I take on board. The third one does not make sense. The Minister of State argued that a consequence would be that the reduced voting age would apply in respect of local elections and referenda but not European elections and some other elections. That is not really an issue. Legislation will have to be drafted and passed. On foot of a constitutional referendum, legislation would be required to amend the Electoral Acts. Surely that issue could be addressed in that. I do not believe it is really an issue.

This debate has been very worthwhile. We will work towards June 2023 to make sure this legislation proceeds at that stage. I will actively follow the work of the electoral commission and how it deals with this matter between now and then.

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