Colette Kelleher (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Senator Frances Black, five minutes and three minutes. I hope we also have time to allow Senator Alice-Mary Higgins to speak. I warmly welcome this Bill and praise Senators Warfield and Ruane for bringing it forward. I also congratulate the National Youth Council of Ireland, the Irish Second-Level Students Union and the Union of Students in Ireland who have campaigned for this day for well over a decade. After their long battle to get this issue onto the political agenda it is up to us to make good on the promises we made and support the Bill.

Since joining the Seanad last summer, and through my role in the public petitions committee and the Seanad public consultations committee, I have been voicing my concerns about the future of democracy. It is not an exaggeration to state that, across the Western world, parliamentary democracies are under strain. To our east, the UK Government will today leave the European Union while, to our west, President Trump continues to attack the media, women's rights, LGBTI rights, migrant rights and the basic freedoms and protections on which America was built. In Ireland, 21st century citizens operating in a digital age increasingly feel disconnected from the political system and there is a growing awareness that the voices of many marginalised groups have historically been ignored. To overcome these challenges we need to fundamentally reassess how we best engage with citizens. One of the changes we need is to expand the franchise to ensure that everyone is truly heard and that is why I am supporting this Bill.

Let us remember that the people who will be given new voting rights if this Bill passes are in many cases already old enough to drive, to get married, to join the Army and pay income tax. If we reflect on the decisions made in these Houses in the past decade it is abundantly clear that the voice and input of young people were absent and that young people bore the brunt of the great recession and others before that. The ESRI states that one quarter of young people suffer from at least three of the following: income poverty, inability to afford basic goods, financial strain, poor health, mental distress, poor housing, overcrowding, neighbourhood problems and mistrust in institutions, including this one. We can understand that when we hear of what is happening with An Garda Síochána, Tusla and the HSE. One institution after another is failing us so it is important to extend our franchise to younger people.

In 2012 youth unemployment was over 30% and while the Government has made great progress, today the rate is still twice what it was in 2007. Some 16,000 young people are long-term unemployed and, to add insult to injury, jobseeker's allowance for young people was cut from €188 to €100 in an act of unforgivable, blatant ageism and age discrimination.