Paul Murphy: Calls Government Delay on Youth Vote a 'Scam'

Thanks a million for the Social Democrats and Deputy Farrelly in particular for bringing this forward. I think this is really, really important, Bill, and it's great that you've used your private members' time for it. I mean, look, I don't really think we need to debate this. It's the most obvious thing in the world that 16 and 17-year-olds should be able to vote. It's their future. It's them who are going to live in the barbarous world that we're currently on our trajectory for. It's them who have the power and, I hope, are going to avert us from the course we're currently on of descent into ecological breakdown, the world marked by war and genocide, and a world marked by the rise of the far-right and authoritarianism and fascism. They are the people who are currently out working, paying taxes, able to join the army and not permitted a say in all the decisions that are made. They're the ones who, on the current trajectory, are going to be forced to emigrate out of this country because they can't afford to get housing here. They're the ones affected by all of it and they're fully mature. I'll come back to the maturity point later. One point I want to make is, like, if you weren't familiar with DAW procedures and stuff, you could look at this and say, should the government's not being unreasonable here? They're saying, just give us a year, electoral commission, look into it further, pass in a year. That all sounds very, very reasonable. But let me just tell you, this is a scam. They are kicking the can down the road. They have no intention whatsoever of allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote. They are not telling the truth to young people. That's what's happening here. You might say to me, jeez, that's very cynical. It's very, very cynical to think that. I'll tell you, the reason I know it is because they did exactly the same thing to a bill I brought forward to stop discrimination against young people. In 2022, I brought forward at first stage a bill for equal pay for young workers to stop the scandal of sub-minimum wages, whereby young people are allowed, under-20s, are legally allowed to be paid less than the minimum wage. We brought that at second stage, which is what's happening here on 14th of June 2023. And, again, they didn't have the courage of their convictions to vote against it and to say we're in favour of the super-exploitation of young people. So, instead, they brought this same thing, timed amendment. They said, well, the low-pay commission is looking into it, so let's just delay it for a year. A year later, then, it's deemed to be passed. Then, the low-pay commission, this body that was going to look into it, comes out and says, we should get rid of sub-minimum wages. So, the report they said we're going to wait for came out and said, we should do the thing that our bill is going to do. Did they then do it? No, no. They said, oh, the Department of Finance, we need a further economic investigation into how much it would cost, blah, blah, blah. They started that then over a year ago. They didn't even wait for that to be published. It's still not published. And they've said, no, we're not going to do it. We'll reconsider it back in 2029. So, this is a scam that they're currently engaged in. They don't have the courage to come out and say, we don't think 16 and 17-year-olds should be allowed to vote. So, instead, they're kicking can down the road and they're trying to make it go away. The only way they will be beaten on it is if public pressure comes to bear and they feel that they can't withstand it. And, like, the bottom line point of the maturity thing, they think we are immature. It's not just young people they think are immature, they think all of the left are immature. You look at the neutrality debate, we're presented as being immature because we're in favour of neutrality. We're presented as immature because we're in favour of actual climate action. We're in favour of what Milon Martin spoke about in Brazil, actually doing it, actually following the science, actually telling the truth as opposed to bending over backwards to multinational corporations, big tech, fossil fuel, big agribusiness. They think that is immature and not taking the economy seriously or whatever. They think, like, building housing, saying we should invest money in building housing that is actually affordable, that's immature because we don't understand how the market works. When they're saying that young people aren't mature enough to vote, really what they're giving away is, what they're scared of is that young people have progressive opinions on a wide range of things and they're scared that those young people are not going to back up the continuation of the rule of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and young people will look to the left. For me, that's not the reason to support us, to be honest. It's a point of principle, regardless of how young people are going to vote. 16 and 17-year-olds, of course, should have the right to have a say, should have a vote. We should stop the paternalistic attitude towards them. You also get all the benefits that are seen in other countries in terms of increased turnout because you're engaging people at a younger point. Those points have been made. Thanks. Thank you very much, Debbie.