Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to thank the Electoral Commission for the great work it has been doing. It is a very difficult job trying to balance everything. For the future, I would encourage six-seater constituencies and not breaking county boundaries. That is obviously very important. The Minister of State appreciates that. It is not natural for people to break a county boundary. If there is any way that could be respected, I would be very grateful for that.

With regard to lowering the voting age to 16, I can see a great merit in it. People can do an awful lot of things at 16 now and one of the things I think they should be allowed to do is vote. We want to encourage people to vote. It is a thing we should not be afraid of and if we are afraid of it as politicians, it is we who are wrong and not the 16-year-olds. If we are not in tune with the 16-year-olds, that is our fault, not theirs. It is up to us to be in tune with them, to be marching with them and to be public representatives for them as 17-, 18-, 19- or 20-year-olds. That should be welcomed.

With regard to making it easier for people to vote, our system of postal voting is antiquated. It has not been looked at. We always hear of it happening through work or time constraints. We are in a very busy world now. I am not for one second suggesting that people should be able to vote with their phones but people can do everything else with their phones now. One of the things that is still very restrictive and hard for people to do is vote. To make it easier and to get more people out voting, we should look at that. We should look at mechanisms and ways of doing that. Obviously we have to ensure there would not be any shenanigans or voter impersonation or anything like that but we should have some system in the world we are living in so people could be able to vote.

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