Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)

Fáilte to everybody in the Gallery. I am delighted to see them here today. I thank the Social Democrats for tabling the Bill. We remember the Electoral (Amendment) (Voting at 16) Bill 2016. We restored it to the Order Paper in the Seanad in 2021 and it was seconded by Senator Ruane. We are a long time at this; we are too long at it. The Minister of State knows from his contribution that we are too long at it. I ask him not to let the permanent government get in the way of this. This is a political measure that needs to be taken. As was said, we can do it here ourselves and we need to do it.

We cannot say that on one hand we are listening to youth groups and to young people and, at the same time, say they cannot have what they are asking for. It is vital that we do this. At the age of 16, people know the difference between right and wrong. In fact, there are many people who are 86 who do not know the difference between right and wrong. We see how things have evolved over the years.

Even at 16, while I may not have been party political, I was certainly very interested in what was happening on our island. I was very shocked and appalled by the fact that so much was happening in the North. It was always of interest to me. As a child, I could never make sense of the fact that a tiny island like ours was divided and that part of our island was owned by another island. That still does not make sense to me today. It did not make sense to me when I was 15 either or even younger than that. We do a disservice by not lowering the age.

I respectfully ask the Minister of State to take the amendment off the table. We are talking about 24 months. It is the two years between 16 and 18. That is all we are talking about. I commend all the youth groups and the campaign that has led on this for years. In fact, some of the people who were involved in the campaign now have children themselves. We do not want to let this continue.

As a TD who comes from Mayo, we see that what happens is people, like my two sons, go to college. If they are not registered to vote before they leave home, where do they register for their four or six years in college? It is not right and this all builds into the low turnout of young people voting.

I welcome the Assembly lowering the age to 16, which happened recently, but then, just down the road, 16-year-olds cannot vote. We have to correct this. I have long believed that a lot of Government- and EU-funded groups, such as LEADER, should be obligated to have youth boards in their decision-making. Young people need to be involved in the decisions being made that impact them most. What is the Government afraid of? I do not say this cynically. No more than giving the vote to Irish citizens in the North or the diaspora, it is time to be confident about this and to be confident in the ability of young people, and the ability and insight of Irish citizens everywhere, particularly on the rest of our island.

Obviously, there has to be an education programme with it also but I would not be concerned about the arguments that teachers are going to influence young people in how to vote. Have you ever tried to convince a 16-year-old to do something they did not want to do? Good luck with that. People are well able to make up their own minds but it would bring onto the curriculum the things that need to be discussed. These are things that are being discussed anyway about education, climate, transport, health and housing. Young people are discussing these things in their own groups. They just need to be able to have a say in votes. It would be a shame on all of our houses if we go beyond this without progressing this legislation to lower the voting age to 16. There are so many reasons we have to do the right thing here and the Minister of State knows it.

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