I move amendment No. 1:
In page 2, line 18, to delete "twenty-one" and substitute "eighteen".
I would not have agreed to the amendment being taken immediately after tea had I realised that the tea break would finish at 7 o'clock because I had another meeting in the House which extended from 6.30 to 7.30 and which had to be adjourned because this house decided to resume at 7 o'clock.
The reason for the introduction of this amendment is because it has been, for a considerable length of time, the policy of my party to press for the introduction of the right to vote for 18 year olds and upwards in all elections. As the House knows, the Minister for Local Government recently agreed in the other House, in response to a Private Members Bill introduced by some Members of my Party, to have a referendum in the autumn of this year in order to allow the electorate to decide on the matter of giving votes at 18 in relation to Dáil and presidential elections and referenda.
As the House also knows the Constitution, as it stands at present, was careful to distinguish between those types of elections and local elections. It specifically excluded local elections from the proviso that only those of 21 years and upwards should be allowed to vote. We are all well aware that it requires no more than a simple amendment to the Acts of the Oireachtas to allow 18 year olds and upwards the right to vote in local elections. Obviously, the most appropriate time to implement this was when the Local Elections Bill, 1972, came before the Houses of the Oireachtas. For some strange reason, which, with respect, the Parliamentary Secretary has not explained very satisfactorily, the Government decided not to do so.
They have included section 1 in this Bill and it is, in my opinion, a section which will never be operated. When the Parliamentary Secretary replied to the Second Stage of this debate he made it very clear that in his personal opinion section 1 of this Bill will be amended before any opportunity to implement it arises. It is the strangest form of Government to introduce a section, which in the words of the Parliamentary Secretary whose task it is to bring it before the House will never be implemented. The Parliamentary Secretary said very clearly on several occasions that 18 year olds and upwards will be allowed to vote in the next local elections. In order that that should happen section 1 will require to be amended.
It was the submission of some Senators, notably Senator Honan and the Parliamentary Secretary, that it would be wrong to include 18 year olds in this Bill in anticipation of the outcome of the referendum which is due to take place in the autumn and that it would be better to wait and allow the electorate to voice their opinion on this matter in relation to other elections before deciding whether or not to allow 18 year olds to vote in the local elections.
When the Parliamentary Secretary was replying to the debate, in response to a somewhat unruly interruption of mine, in which I asked if it was in anticipation of the referendum he had decided to instruct those who would be compiling the electoral register to take note of the people of 18 to 21 years in each household, he very courteously replied that it was in anticipation of the result of the referendum that the compilers of the draft electoral register would be instructed to take note of those people.
Senator Reynolds said earlier in the debate that you cannot have it both ways: you cannot stand up and say it is wrong to include 18-year-olds in this Bill in anticipation of the decision of the Irish people in the autumn referendum, and then say: "In anticipation of the decision of the Irish people in the autumn referendum, we intend instructing the compilers of the draft electoral register in September to take note of all those of 18 to 21 years of age currently living in the State".
Consequently, in those simple examples, and in the course of the debate this afternoon, with respect, both the Parliamentary Secretary and Senator Honan contradicted themselves and gave the lie to their own arguments. It is the intention to anticipate the referendum result by taking note of all those of 18. Yet, for some reason, the Parliamentary Secretary will not agree to anticipate the referendum result by having, in section 1, the right for people of 18 years and over to vote in local elections. What it amounts to at present is that if, as we all expect, the autumn referendum proposals are agreed to, the Parliamentary Secretary, or his Minister, or somebody else will have to come back here and to the other House and introduce an amendment to change section 1 of the Local Elections Bill, 1972.
Section 3 of the Bill, if agreed to, will ensure that no local election takes place before June, 1972. Consequently, depending on the result of the autumn referendum, section 1 will never and can never be implemented and will have to be amended before it can ever take legislative effect. That is bad parliamentary procedure, bad parliamentary draftsmanship, and bad thinking on the part of those who decided to introduce the Bill; it is merely following delaying tactics which are doing no more than holding up the time of the House. I would have thought that the obvious thing to do, if there was some marked reluctance to introduce the 18 years element at this stage, would be to drop section 1 completely from this Bill and to include it in one of the subsequent Local Government Bills which would be introduced into the Houses of the Oireachtas following the referendum.
I do not think there is any need to go into great detail as to why we feel those of 18 years and over should be afforded the right to vote. However, it is no harm to mention that in the opinion of the Government of the day they are entitled and expected, if they are wage earners, to pay taxes. Under the laws of the country, they are afforded the right to marry. If they are property owners, they would be expected to pay rates towards the cost of the administration of the local authority area in which they own the property.