The Minister for Jobs has denied that plans to give votes to 16-year-olds have been delayed for election reasons.

Richard Bruton says it is not true that a referendum's being delayed, simply because younger voters would not support the government.

Echoing the words of Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil on Tuesday, he says the government simply can't hold too many referendums at the same time.

A recent Red C poll shows Sinn Féin is the most popular party with people under the age of 25 but Mr Bruton denied that the government's unpopularity with young people has anything to do with the delay.

“A number of referenda have been put forward by the Constitutional Convention, we've dealt with each one as they have come up, and we are now putting in place a schedule of referenda," he said.

"Clearly, the decisions that are coming up in the May referendum are going to be really important - on same-sex marriage, a very important issue, clearly we will be focusing on that one."

Former Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan announced 18 months ago that there would be a referendum on lowering the voting age to 16 held by the end of 2015.

“The Government therefore commits to holding a referendum before the end of 2015 on a proposal to amend the Constitution to provide for a voting age of 16,” he said.

However, Mr Kenny appears to have quashed this when he told the Dáil on Tuesday: . “Two referenda will be held this year and there won’t be any further referendum held.”

While addressing the issue of a referendum on removing the blasphemy law from the constitution, Mr Kenny say people “may well switch off” if facing too many votes at once, and so this year there will be just two referendums – those already scheduled for May; on marriage rights for same-sex couples and lowering the age to run for the presidency.

The National Youth Council of Ireland (YCI) says the news is deeply disappointing.

James Doorley of the YCI says the referendum should now be held on the same day as the next election.

“We certainly would support that. I think referenda tend to have a lower turnout but a general election tends to have a fairly high turnout so you would be getting a fairly comprehensive decision from the people,” he said.

“The only challenge to that is trying to ensure the issue of the voting age some that people would have time to consider because a general election - there’s a lot of parties and individuals and a lot of other things going on,” he added.