Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank the Civil Engagement Group - Senators Higgins, Flynn, Black and Ruane and their team for tabling this omnibus Bill. It is very welcome and I am grateful for the chance to speak on it. I missed the electoral reform Bill, due to Covid, so I am happy to have the chance to talk about having the vote at 16 in particular. I welcome Paul Gordon and others from the National Youth Council of Ireland, and Maeve and Leo from the ISSU. I commend Youth Work Ireland, which recently had a briefing for the Oireachtas in Buswells. One of its key asks was to extend voting rights in local and European elections to 16 and 17-year-olds. I struggle to repeat myself sometimes on these issues. We all rely on 16 and 17-year-olds in our political campaigns to knock on doors. We allow them to join our political parties but at the end of the day, as many people as possible who are ready to vote should be able to vote. We have experience of it now and education and research in Wales and Scotland that shows the positivity of extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. The European Parliament elections are next year and as young people essentially will be a minority in an ageing EU population, we must ensure young people's voices are heard in those elections, as well as in our own.

I also commend Tomás Heneghan on taking the case. I thank Senator McDowell for his work on the Seanad implementation reform group and for the recognition of my work and that of my party. There has been tireless work by other people as well on the Seanad reform implementation group, such as Senator Higgins. She is right that the Government has run out of room. I know if he was here, Senator Norris would equally talk about Seanad reform. A good friend, Tony Walsh, sent me on the piece of literature that propelled David Norris into this House in 1987. He said that reform of the Seanad was a key issue for him in that election, to strengthen the vocational panel system and to extend the right to vote to a much wider suffrage, and to end the nonsense whereby UK citizens resident in Ireland could vote in Dáil elections but not for the Seanad. He said the university constituencies represented the one area in which our Northern neighbours participate freely in the political processes of the Republic and this should be encouraged rather than discouraged. Obviously the Seanad reform implementation group proposed one single six-seat constituency, but that was obviously divisive even without our own group. It is fair to say that both of the university constituencies are by far the most democratic ones for this House. As Senator Higgins says, the Government has run out of room now and we need to take a holistic overall look at this House.

We want the Bill to go to the committee, and we will support that in order to flesh out a couple of issues. Free public transport on the day of an election is one issue, and whether one needs a polling card. The cost of such an initiative must be considered but we are interested in exploring it and we want the Bill to go to committee in order to do so.

We also support reform of the area of political purposes in principle. We think the wording as presented has significant unintended consequences, such as allowing organisations and movements from outside this State, such as the US religious right, to spend money and improperly interfere in our legislative process and referendums. That said, allowing the wording to go to committee is a worthwhile exercise and will provide detailed scrutiny of the Bill. We accept there is a problem but we support the Bill and we encourage the Government to allow it to go to committee. I thank the proposers for allowing us to have a chance to debate this issue again.