AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Cross the Border into the North and things change. For one thing your average life expectancy will be two years less in the North, you will have far less chance of having Third Level education – in the South we are just about the most educated nation in the world.
On the other hand you are more likely to be able to afford to buy a home, as average house prices are €100,000 lower in the North. Going forward here we will be paying 15% tariffs on exports into the US, whereas the North will be paying 10% along with the rest of the UK.
Now in the near future there is likely to be another change between the six and the 26 counties. The UK has promised to lower the voting age to 16 before the next general election. Another day, another difference, but what difference will the change make and how likely are we to follow suit?
More countries are now offering younger voters a chance to have their say at the ballot box, among them Austria; seven out of 16 German States; Argentina and Brazil. Scotland and Wales have already given 16-year-olds the vote and in the rest of the UK around 1.5 million young voters will be involved in the change representing 1.5% to 5% of the electorate depending on the constituency.
The idea that including younger voters might benefit Keir Starmer’s Labour – given that the general view that voters get more conservative as they grow older – doesn’t seem to hold good, given the finding in other countries that younger people vote across the spectrum like the rest of us. But in the North it will make a difference, given the Unionist/Nationalist divide.
In an opinion poll last year only 6% of Unionists supported the change compared with 70% of Nationalists, no prizes for guessing the political gain – albeit a small one – will be in Nationalists’ favour.
Here in the South, lowering the voting age for European and local elections would require a change in the law but Dáil and Presidential elections would require a referendum, not something the Government would be too keen on, perhaps given the fate of the ‘Woman in the Home’ referendum last year.
The National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI), the representative group for voluntary youth bodies in Ireland, has been advocating to give 16- to 18-year-olds a greater say in political affairs since the 2013 referendum on the abolition of the Sinead (defeated) and the establishment of a Court of Appeal (upheld).
Would that age group be mature enough to vote and would they even bother to register? Certainly the line of where childhood and adulthood is drawn is confused. In the eyes of the law the age of majority or adulthood is 18, while the age of criminal responsibility is set at 12 and the age for marriage or buying booze is 18. Yet, at 16 youths may leave school, have a job. Surely if you work and pay taxes you should have a vote? The counter-argument goes that giving people legally regarded as children the responsibility of voting is pushing them into adulthood too soon.
Obviously teenagers vary as to how mature they are, but I agree with the arguments of the NYCI that it is important to give young people a voice and to get politicians to engage more with young people, especially in relation to their futures at a time when many in their 20s and 30s are emigrating because of the housing crisis.
If Scotland is anything to go by, being given the vote certainly encourages greater participation. When 16- and 17-year-olds were given the right to vote in 2014 in the Scottish Referendum, the turnout for the age group was 75%.
Giving votes to mid-teens isn’t in the Programme for Government but meantime Social Democrat Aidan Farrelly (TD Kildare North) introduced the 41st Amendment to the Constitution for the reduction of the voting age on the grounds that it’s an issue of equality. The amendment has now gone forward to await second reading stage.
We may have a referendum and I think that our mid-teens, generally better informed than today’s adults were at their age, deserve the vote.
Why not encourage responsibility? Aafter all, they are our future too.
