Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are talking about 16-year-olds and it is not the case that they just wake up one morning and say they are ready to vote and engage in politics. Those steps begin at a very early age and they begin even earlier for communities that are disenfranchised because they begin to compare those things to which they do not have access. They probably think this is just the way it is, but that is what we need to change. We can do that through enfranchising people much younger. Too many people from communities like mine believe this is how the world is and there is nothing they can do about it. We cannot stand by and allow many generations of young people not to be enfranchised. We can enfranchise them by making sure young people can vote while they are still in school.

Following on from the example I gave of the protest about the school uniform at the school gates, as a young woman I did not have a class perspective but I began to think about why I was not allowed to do something, why I could not do something or whether something was wrong. Sometimes we think of politics with a big P and of those few lucky people who get to sit in these Chambers, but we all know politics is every decision in every family in every community, in every GAA club and every decision made in local community organisations or addiction treatment services. Politics happens everywhere every day. It is not only the things we say are important in this Chamber. People are engaging in critical thought daily in their own homes, in the way they resource their families or the decisions they make on where they send their children to school, and children make political decisions every day in the way they engage in society. As I grew older, I began to realise at a very young age the class element of issues. I was able at the age of 12, 13 or 14 to engage in those big topics but I did not have anywhere to bring them. I felt quite isolated with them. If I had been enfranchised at the age of 16, I would have run to the voting booth because I did that the age of 18. It was quite arbitrary for me to have that right at the age of 16 or 18. I already had a three-year-old by the time I was 18 years old. I had lived many lives by the time I got there. I was running drug services at the age of 17 but I still could not vote. During the most recent referendum my daughter, who is now 21 years old, was knocking on doors at the age of 16 and 17 engaging in dialogue on referendums, yet she could not vote but, like the young people who are in the Gallery today, she was out campaigning and fighting for those issues.

I think the problem is that we are a little afraid. Senator Malcolm Byrne was correct in pointing out the way young people vote will not necessarily differ but the issues they focus on will refocus political parties. That is what the political parties are somewhat afraid of. As we get older we make different political decisions. We make them based on who we are as 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds or 50-year-olds and we become somewhat disconnected from the issues of concern to 16-year-olds, 18-year-olds or 20-year-olds. We suddenly decide we know better, we are the parents in society and we know what they need. We are afraid of having to realign our values as grown adults because suddenly we start protecting our interests. We think about our pensions or mortgages and that it might be too risky to vote for this or that or others might be landlords and they would not want to do this, that or the other. Although we might not be afraid of young people voting for fringe parties or some extreme politics, we are afraid they will our refocus our politics away from the selfish decision-making we engage in based on our experience of life now instead of own experience and understanding of young people’s lives.

I recall being told that as a politician or an adult, you should always endeavour to leave society better for the contribution you have made, but the problem is we have lost sight of what that contribution really needs to be.Young people can begin to change what politics look like on a world stage. In preparation for today, I was looking up famous faces that have become known to the world because they are young and because they not only change their own local community, but the world on a global scale. I am thinking of Malala, Greta Thunberg, and of Jaylen Arnold, who has Tourette's syndrome, OCD and Asperger's syndrome. He founded non-governmental organisations, NGOs, at the age of 16 or 17 to stop bullying against people who have special needs. I think of my own daughter, who is on panels for mental health and Asperger's syndrome at the age of 16. I am thinking of Marley Dias who campaigned for and brought about the #1000BlackGirlBooks movement, which was about the representation of young black women and diverse groups in literature. These people are all under the age of 18. I am thinking of Isra Hirsi, who is an environmental and racial activist, Sophie Cruz, who is an activist for undocumented migrants and Jasilyn Charger, who works with mental health issues for teenagers. I focused on young people, one of whom was Abigail Lupi. The work that she has done, and the campaigning she has done around the world was due to her visiting a grandparent who was in a nursing home. She began to raise awareness of the silent loneliness, as well as the depression and mental health issues experienced by people in older life. There is also a girl called Jazz Jennings, who works on LGBTQ issues and Param Jaggi, who works on environmental issues. Here in Ireland, I remember watching an RTÉ Juniors "My Story" of a person named Flossie Donnelly who is looking at the problem of plastics.

All around the world young kids are making big impacts. Yet we continue to make them feel like they are not ready to participate when they are already participating. It is the case that we are not ready to listen to them. We are not ready to put aside our own idea that we must know better because we have been here longer, because we are older and we are wiser. We must put that aside for the times that kids are living in today, for the world of technology, for AI, and for all of the things we legislate for in these Houses. These will impact them more than they will impact us. This is especially the case for technology. It is hugely important that we engage young people. I do not think that politicians in either House really understand the impact of the digital world on the generations that will come after us.

I will go back to the original Electoral (Amendment) (Voting at 16) Bill. A young lad who was working for me at the time began to support Senator Warfield and me in the research for Vote at 16. He was in transition year when he came to do the work experience. He headed up the whole research. His name was Eoin. He is obviously old enough to vote now, but he was not when he first helped us with the Bill. We invited transition year students from Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, into the audiovisual room. We were trying to enfranchise more disadvantaged students to engage in the political conversation around voting at 16 years old. Many of these schools claimed to have student councils, but they do not resource them very well or make sure that they are formed. They do not give them the support they need to be fully functioning councils, which is a shame.

We brought in all of the DEIS schools. We had a round-table conversation with them about whether they felt they would vote at 16 years, about what that meant to them and about what political issues they cared about. It was quite startling at the time that most of them said that they did not think they should vote at 16 years old. I remember saying, "Okay, that is interesting. Can we discuss why? What are your reasons?", to which they said, "We do not really know anything about politics". Then, we asked them if there were any issues that they cared about. Then, they started naming issues that they cared about. There was even a disconnect between their understanding of what it means to know politics. There is a stuffy understanding of politics, such as political history, political science or international relations, etc. That is a textbook, academic understanding of politics.

We broke it down and they gave examples in their lives. Some of them had already been out volunteering with their parents and they had been doing soup runs, etc. They cared about addiction, because they had experienced it in their family. They care about access to detox services. They were naming issues that are political and on which they had a voice and an understanding. Yet, they did not connect that to the action of voting and to engaging in the political establishment. That is where we are going wrong. We can engage kids that young to vote at 16 years old. We can engage them in the school system to understand. We may then, through having the vote at 16 years old, address some of the wider issues around kids being disenfranchised in particular communities.

From there, we trained each of those students in basic research skills. Then, Eoin developed a survey and they all went off into their own schools. They surveyed their own schools and they carried out focus groups in their schools on voting at 16 years old. Quite a mixed bag came back, but we left an open box on the end of it for the students to tell us about things they care about in the world. They all had big ideas and big visions. They just were not connecting those to the political system. That is on us to try to change that, so that everybody understands those interconnected pieces between the issues that they care about.

I think it was Senator Higgins who said that ultimately politics is just people coming together to make decisions about how we all live. When we begin to break politics down into that, we invite more people into the conversation, instead of making it too full of flowery language or too big that a person does not understand it, or saying, "Oh that's a finance Bill and you will never understand that so park that over there". Everyone is always told they will never understand it, that they will not get it. Really, if we cannot explain politics, we do not understand it. If we cannot break politics down into basic accessible language for everybody to engage in, it means that we do not understand it. A sociologist, although I cannot remember who, commented on how sociological reports or research are done, for example, if they are doing a sociology study on 16-year-olds' engagement in activism or political issues. If those 16-year-olds do not see themselves in the sociological report that has been produced, the sociologist is not doing their job properly. The same is the case for politicians. If young people do not look at us and see themselves in the work that we do, in how we present ourselves and in what we care about, then we are not doing our job properly.

By us making a real commitment to these amendments, we will be doing our job properly. We will be saying that whether a person is 16, 17 or 18 years of age, they have a view, they have a voice and we want them to participate. It is up to us to make politics more relevant.