This article is from page 4 of the 2007-05-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
CLARE senator and general elec- tion candidate, Timmy Dooley (FF), yesterday criticised his party leader, Bertie Ahern, over the decision to hold the general election on a Thurs- day.
Senator Dooley, who alongside Tony Mulcahy (FG) and James Breen (Ind) was given a five star rating by the National Youth Council of Ire- land, said he would like to have seen the election take place closer to the weekend to accommodate students
living away at third level institu- tions.
“Personally I am _ disappointed. I haven’t made a big issue out of it but personally I would have liked to have seen the election take place on a Friday or even on a Saturday,’ said Senator Dooley.
“It is a situation creating a balance between the students who want to vote and the people in the cities who would be going down the country for the weekend.”
Dooley was one of only five Clare general election candidates to re-
spond to a survey on young people’s issues conducted by the National Youth Council of Ireland. Each can- didate was rated according to their answers to a series of youth related question and given a Star rating.
Senator Dooley received a maxi- mum five star rating along with Tony Mulcahy and James Breen, while Madeleine Taylor-Quinn (FG) and Brian Meaney (Green) received four Star ratings.
Each of the respondents, except for Madeleine Taylor-Quinn, responded ‘yes’ when asked should the vote be
given to 16 and 17 year olds.
‘“T have had the view for a long time that children are more educated now than they were 20 or 30 years ago. With the improvements in technol- ogy and communications they know more about voting and politics than ever before,’ said Dooley.
“I would argue that giving them the vote at an early age would get them more involved and make them more interested in politics. If people were allowed to vote from 16 it would goa long way to tackling the problem of apathy in a lot of voters.”