John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The proposal, as approved by the Government on 26 September last, is that a referendum on reducing the voting age and a referendum on reducing the time in which a person can get a divorce would be held together. I hope I am not coming across as patronising.

What Senator Mac Lochlainn said earlier about older people pretending to be younger and knowing what younger people want, struck a chord with me. I tend to agree with him on that. However, we have an onus to be honest with people. It would be unconscionable for any Government to vote now to reduce the voting age in marked contravention of the vote at the Constitutional Convention on this question which said that there should be a common voting age across all elections. There is also the possibility that a future referendum might overturn that decision. Whoever will be in government at the time will act to implement the result of any referendum on the voting age. I am sure the Oireachtas as a whole will act to do so, but until that referendum is held, to hold European and local elections, which would have voters of 16 and 17 years of age casting a ballot on the same day that the public might make a different decision would be completely unsatisfactory to say the least. I am not disputing the legitimacy of the arguments that have been made.

Senator Warfield spoke about the involvement of secondary school students. It is a matter of luck in terms of the year one is born and when one gets a vote. The age of 18 or 16 are arbitrary. There are plenty of 15 year olds who are interested. My political awakening happened when I was eight years of age and Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo Irish Agreement. I decided at that age that I wanted to be a politician but I was a particularly weird child. My first vote was in the 1997 general election when I was doing my leaving certificate. The vote on the Good Friday Agreement, which took place very shortly after that, was my second vote and I was a secondary school student at the time. Even under our current system, secondary school students have a vote, but that is not the point. The principle is whether the voting age should be reduced. A decision has been made that this question should be put to the public in 2019.