Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The recent report of the Children's Rights Alliance gives all of us an opportunity to reflect, ten years on from the children's rights referendum. The name of the report is Voice, Rights, Action! and it calls for the lowering of the voting age to 16 for elections in this State. There are two Bills on the Order Paper that aim to lower the voting age to 16 and 17 for local and European elections. The last Seanad witnessed what was probably the most co-ordinated campaign to lower the voting age to 16 and 17. It was proposed that this be done for local and European elections. The Bill remains on Committee Stage, having first been proposed in 2016. We wanted to achieve reform in time for the 2019 local and European elections. It should be remembered that this Bill is not concerned with general elections, referendums or presidential elections. Change in respect of these would require constitutional change and constitutional amendments cannot be proposed in this House. However, it is not a bad idea to make a start with local and European elections. Scotland and Wales have made such a change in respect of their assembly elections and Scotland also did so for its referendum. That has been successful. Until we can get constitutional change, this would be a helpful amendment. It would also be helpful in winning any eventual referendum. The Children's Rights Alliance report calls for the voting age to be lowered to 16. Are we prepared to listen to children and young people and for them to hold us to account? Youth organisations across the country support this change. Over the last 100 years, we have continually widened the electoral franchise and we should do so again in time for the 2024 local and European elections through the Electoral (Amendment) (Voting at 16) Bill 2021, which is to eventually come before the Seanad this year.