Mr. John McGuire:

No, that is not true. We are and always have been incredibly focused on maximising the return on our scratch cards. This was a cracking business for us for many years. We had sales of up to €10 million per year, and this was bringing in almost €3 million in profit. Right through the years, we have had a good business. Now, we have stripped back the number employed in the company from 36 to ten or 11. We need a basic amount of infrastructure to support it, and that has a cost. Unfortunately, when one pays the prizes, commission and other bills, there is very little left. We accept that and we are unhappy with it, and we would like it to be better. We hope there will be better days ahead and we will stick in there hoping that. Both the scratch cards and radio bingo product go into the same types of shops. In their totality in the year to which the Minister referred, they were bringing in €560,000 net. This is wonderful income for us. We would prefer it to be €1 million or €2 million. We would do that.

We are of the view that if there were fairness in the market in terms of there being no cap on the prizes, and if we could offer similar prizes to a competitor, we would have at least 10% or 15% of the market, representing turnover of approximately €75 million or €100 million, which would bring us in approximately €30 million in profit.