Two-thirds of young people did not vote in the recent local and European elections, giving Ireland the lowest level of first-time voter turnout in the European Union, according to a report from the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI).
The report, introduced yesterday by the Minister for the Environment, says the main reasons young people give for not voting are that they are not registered, too busy or not interested. Yesterday Mr Dempsey again emphasised his commitment to reform of the electoral system and said he hoped the present Government would produce proposals in this regard.
The NYCI report proposes that young people be automatically registered to vote when they reach the age of 18 and that voting take place at weekends to facilitate young people working or studying away from home.
It points to "alarming" trends in voter turnout among the general population, saying that the 1997 general election turnout of 66.2 per cent was the lowest since 1923, and that both the 1997 presidential election turnout of 46.6 per cent and the 1999 local election turnout of 50.2 per cent were the lowest ever.
"The turnout among young people is lower than among the general population," the report continues. According to the reports of the Referendum Commission on the Belfast Agreement and the Amsterdam Treaty referendums, while the overall turnout was 56 per cent, 75 per cent of those aged 55 to 64 voted while just 38 per cent of electors under 25 voted.
The NYCI carried out a street survey of 400 young people on why they choose to vote or not to vote. It also sent a questionnaire to all 226 Oireachtas members, to which 106 TDs and senators replied.
Seventy-five per cent of these Oireachtas members favoured the introduction of voting at weekends.
"There is no single cause and no single solution to falling youth participation," according to the president of the NYCI, Ms Jillian Hassett.
"There are two central ways of addressing the problem. The first is to make it easier to register and vote. The second is to move political participation up the list of priorities of young people," she said.
Responding to the NYCI's weekend voting proposal, Mr Dempsey said he was open to considering the idea of Saturday voting. However, he had checked with the major churches recently on the idea of Sunday voting, and they still had "a major difficulty" with this.
Mr Dempsey also repeated his determination to reform the electoral system, saying: "The present system puts party colleagues at loggerheads and their eye is on the local rather than the national level.
"A lot of events now being investigated by tribunals might not have happened if political eyes had been on national issues rather than medical cards for constituents and local issues."
Mr Dempsey said he was glad to see that cynicism about politics did not feature high on the list of reasons given by young people for not voting. He said the media had a responsibility not to encourage cynicism.