The older liberal generation can just about understand the attraction of Sinn Féin, but it is flummoxed by the fact that young people are much more likely to get actively involved with an anti-abortion platform, whether it be with the more mainstream Pro-Life Campaign or the numerous splinter groups, than the pro-choice lobby, writes Breda O'Brien.
First-time voters this year were born in 1983 or 1984. That's a bit of a shock to the rest of us, to whom the 1980s still seem relatively recent. While it is as impossible to generalise about young people as it is about any other group, it is safe to bet that many of those first-time voters will be less excited by the privilege and more sceptical about the value of their vote than their parents were.
Young people are always a mystery to the older generation, and they like it that way. The gulf between those who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s and those coming of age at the start of the 21st century is still extraordinary. For one friend of mine, the difference was illustrated by walking down Grafton Street and seeing every lamp-post carrying a Sinn Féin poster about Sellafield.
Those same lamp-posts once held posters about abortion and divorce, often put up by the Labour Party, which was where the cutting edge of anti-establishment sentiment lay then. Now the anti-establishment option among political parties is Sinn Féin and, to a lesser extent, the Greens.
Taking a look at why Gerry Adams is now the second most popular political party leader in the country is an interesting exercise. American political consultants often use the metaphors of "air war" and "ground war". The air war concentrates on the mass media so as to influence public opinion and to generate elite responses and policy changes. The ground war involves building up grassroots organisations which can mobilise supporters for direct action, or capitalise on pre-existing networks to do so.
Unfortunate as the metaphor may be in relation to it, Sinn Féin, particularly since the lifting of the anti-democratic Section 31, has excelled at both. Perhaps training in how to resist interrogation in rather more serious circumstances gives one an edge when it comes to media outings.
Less facetiously, given that much of the mainstream media was deeply hostile to Sinn Féin and still is, it is an extraordinary achievement. There is an ingrained discipline which means that those representing the party in the media are rarely "off message". Most importantly perhaps for young people, the dedication and commitment displayed by the leadership contrasts with what they perceive as the remote and out-of-touch politicians of other parties.
In the Republic, this gloss might wear off if Sinn Féin got into the position where it was in power in a coalition government. All politics involves compromise and at the moment Sinn Féin has the luxury of criticising from the outside. The fact that most young people no longer know their history helps, too. They do not understand the entrenched hostility to this "slightly constitutional party", nor would they know that that phrase was once applied elsewhere.
As for the ground war, Sinn Féin was in troubled communities in the Republic when no other party wanted to know. Like or loathe its rough justice, it built up networks which are now translating into votes which are not available to any other party. It also has a genius for latching on to issues which animate either the local or national community. Gerry Adams may allegedly have jibed Bertie Ahern that opposing Nice was the best possible publicity, but it was also in tune with the mood of the country.
Nice is a very good example of how the major parties failed to realise that an air war was not enough. The only armies actually campaigning on the doorsteps were anti-Nice. There were no grassroots pro-Nice networks to call on because there is no popular identification with the EU. Although young people in general regard themselves as more European than their elders do, having come of age in a time of prosperity, they do not have the same feeling of being beholden to the EU.
Many young people also simply tune out when an issue becomes too complex or boring, and the Nice Treaty scores highly on both. They do not feel a duty to engage.
Again, it is a difference in eras. If you were born in 1983 it is impossible to understand that the 1983 referendum was not so much about abortion as it was a battle for the soul of Ireland.
That's why Fine Gael got it wrong again on the new referendum, with its essentially negative opposition, which offers nothing new. We might have 6,000 people going for abortion, but even they do not necessarily believe that it was right, or that they would not have done things differently if they could.
The recent survey published by Doctrine and Life looked at those born well after Vatican Two who were reared in a time of declining Church influence. They scarcely have the vocabulary to articulate a concept of sin, yet still identified abortion as gravely wrong. The survey confirms that those with third-level education in this generation are far from radical.
Instead they are benign creatures without much feel for global issues, much less ideology, who see their lives in terms of their relationships. Abortion represents a sundering of the most fundamental of relationships. Fine Gael hopes it will have solved any internal difficulties on the issue by resorting to air war tactics - tasteful leaflets, media appearances.
No one will be forced to do anything so messy as campaign. Such spinelessness will only distance the party still further from the ordinary people it hopes will elect it. Nor will it win any brownie points with the young people it so desperately wishes to cultivate.
Many young people may be tuned out and apolitical. Yet the very fact that organisations as utterly different as Sinn Féin and the Pro-Life campaign can reach them, shows that that alleged staple of the 1960s, idealism, is not dead yet. At least not in young people, though it would need its heartbeat checked in most mainstream political parties.