Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government made decisions in regard to this legislation in principle at the time I published the public capital programme. I was looking at everything available to us to fund infrastructure and to spend money on buildings and get construction workers back to work. We came up with the idea for this in November 2011 and I floated it. We have been working on it since then. In order to allow us the time to do so, I had to take advice from the Attorney General on whether I could extend the licence, and the advice was that I could do so on the basis that there was a process in train which had been accepted. The answer to the Chairman's question is that if the lottery licence runs out, there is no licence extant. We could not issue a new licence without going through a competitive process. Under European law, that would open it up to whomever wishes to tender for it. That is the norm.