A wise man.

Sentiment score: 0.48

Yes, I am. I commend Deputy Farrelly on introducing this Bill and on his deep and genuine commitment to young people, engagement in civic life and youth work more generally. I have long supported the reduction of the voting age to 16. In fact, I wrote an opinion piece in August 2007 for The Irish Times and in preparing for this I reread it. The arguments I made then are still as strong 18 years later as they were at the time. Deputy Jen Cummins mentioned she was on the board of NYCI in the noughties and said she felt old. I was on the board of the National Youth Council in the 1990s, but I was described on "The Week in Politics" at the weekend as a young Fianna Fáil TD. Given that we are ageing and our life expectancy is getting higher, I will take that in a positive way. Like many others, I welcome all our guests to the Public Gallery this evening, who are listening to this important debate. It is about votes at 16, but it is also about young people's participation in society. Like others have said, when I go to talk to schools or young people, I find that young people are engaged with the issues. They do not have any filters. They will say exactly what they think. I always get annoyed when I hear the phrase "young people are the future". They are not. They are very much part of the present and engaged in society and we should encourage that. I do not share the dystopian vision of the future that was offered by Deputy Paul Murphy because I am often quite inspired by young people when I engage with them. In January, many of us will go to the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition where we will see some of the most amazing ideas come up. We will see what happens at Young Social Innovators. We engage with Comhairle na nÓg. The Minister of State does so directly. The Irish Second Level Students Union, ISSU, does incredible work and, during the Covid-19 pandemic when there were issues around exams, it was 16- and 17-year-olds in the ISSU, led by Reuban Murray, who provided some of the most informed and inspirational leadership during some of those discussions. Deputies will be aware I chair the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence. We had a session on AI and children and young people. Of all the witnesses who have come - and older witnesses have confirmed this - the younger witnesses, particularly those from the youth advisory panel of the Ombudsman for Children's Office, gave some insightful and informed testimony. I look at the work of Seán O'Sullivan who won the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2024 with his project on detecting the use of large language models in student essays, which was not necessarily popular with all his classmates. He is entirely in touch with the tech revolution we are all facing. Others have talked about climate change and biodiversity and how young people have led in that space. Patrick and John Collison from the Minister of State's neck of the woods won the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition as young people. Arguably, they are among the country's most successful entrepreneurs at the moment. The youth wings of all our political parties and the people who are involved and engaged in them inspire me in many ways. Ógra Fianna Fáil, my political party, allows people to vote and become a member between the ages of 16 and 30 and Ógra Fianna Fáil is in support of reducing the voting age. People can become a voting member of the Minister of State's party, Young Fine Gael, at the age of 16, although it defines youth as going up as far as 35. The individual I believe to have been the greatest Taoiseach in the history of the State, Seán Lemass, fought in the Easter Rising at the age of 16 and he inspired many in politics. When this debate came up before, then Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, expressed strong support for it. When we had engagement with young people during the last term of the Oireachtas on the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act - young people have greater knowledge of online safety and provided great input into the Act - we ended up setting up a youth advisory panel to inform Coimisiún na Meán when it was set up. In the context of the national AI office, which will be set up next year, I also want to see a youth advisory panel be set up. The Government has responded on a lot of youth issues, including reducing youth transport costs and I hope to see the youth culture card introduced. However, I share the views that have been expressed, that in the first instance, we should move to allow for the reduction in the voting age for the local and European elections in 2029, which does not require constitutional change. I know that Deputy Farrelly would prefer that we move and try it in the same way as Austria moved with local elections first and then move on to broader elections. We could see what impact that has and then look at a constitutional amendment. Referring to Austria, I am conscious of what Deputy Gogarty said. Austria has had it for federal elections since 2007, so there is plenty of research, including that mentioned by Deputy Gogarty. The research shows that, on average, young people are as informed as other generations about the issues. They are much more likely to participate later in life. They are embedded in their communities so they will get involved. The evidence is that young people do not tend to swing one way or another politically. They tend to vote broadly in line with other generations. Young people are not all the same. They hold a great variety of views on a variety of issues, but it tends to mean that political parties respond in a far greater way to the issues that are impacting on young people. I finally want to turn to the proposal to kick this down the road for a year. I am raising this because, in the Seanad, on 7 November 2023, when I introduced my Electoral (Amendment) (Voting at 16) Bill 2021, again there was a similar proposal to kick it down the road for a year. At that time, the Government amendment was that the Bill would be read on 1 July 2024 to allow for further consideration of the Bill. At the time, in the last programme for Government, which the Minister of State will remember, there was a commitment to examine the Scottish experience. In July 2023, the then Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, wrote to An Coimisiún Toghcháin as part of its first research programme to specifically examine this issue. I was very glad to hear the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, speaking with real passion. I have to say to the Minister of State, with respect to him and the civil servants who are here, because they were there at that time, that much of his speech was a cut and paste from the speech delivered by the then Minister of State, Senator Malcolm Noonan, in response to the Bill I brought forward in 2023. I have to ask why the Government has not taken action on what has happened up until now. Why was the research not done before? This will require going into committee and into debate. It will not happen overnight. I believe we should allow the Bill through. Go into committee and debate it in great detail. I speak in strong support of the Bill.

Sentiment score: 0.27