Call for vote at 17 and more women active in politics

THE voting age should be lowered to 17 and political parties should be “named and shamed” if they don’t take sufficient steps to increase the number of women in politics, a cross-party Oireachtas committee has recommended.

Despite calls for the Dáil to be slimmed down, the Joint Committee on the Constitution did not recommend a reduction in the number of TDs.

Instead, committee members argued that significant numbers of TDs were required in order to have a properly functioning government, effective opposition and efficient parliament.

The committee spent a year examining the way TDs are elected to the Dáil to see if changes were necessary.

In its report yesterday, it proposed 29 recommendations, several of which would require a referendum as they involve changes to the Constitution.

It recommended that the voting age for elections to the Dáil be lowered from 18 to 17, and that a “voter education programme” be introduced as part of the senior cycle programme in second-level schools.

It called for parties to pursue “positive measures” to promote gender equality both in their membership and candidate selection.

The committee recommended that the Attorney General be asked to examine whether it would be constitutional to link some of the state funding the parties receive to the number of women candidates they nominate.

The commission said that if this were constitutional, the parties should then be required to submit an annual statement “setting out in detail the policies and actions being pursued by them to promote gender equality”.

Elsewhere, the committee proposed that a new voter registration system be established in order to eradicate the widespread problems encountered at past elections. It suggested that citizens’ PPS numbers be used as the basis for the compilation and updating of the electoral register.

The committee also recommended the establishment of a “citizens’ assembly” to “enhance the level of public engagement” with the political process.

It also said legislation should be introduced to ensure that when a seat becomes vacant in the Dáil, it is filled within six months.

However, it recommended that “no change” be made to the formula for determining the number of TDs in the Dáil. That formula is laid down in the Constitution, and provides that the total number be determined by having at least one TD for every 30,000 people or not more than one TD for every 20,000.