Ms Sharon Byrne:

On Senator Mooney's questions, I would make three points and they would answer all his questions. Since the dates the Senator mentioned when the tax was 15% or whatever was the initial tax rate, the difference between then and now is that it was paid by the customer. Today it is not paid by the customer. The year 2006 marked the end of the tax being placed on the customer and it must now be paid by the bookmaker. The other change that was made that year was that bookmakers were forbidden from passing it on to customers. It is expressly written in the legislation that the bookmaker must pay it out of turnover. The reason it was reducing every year was that Internet and telephone betting were being born. They were starting to take the turnover from retail betting. To allow retail betting compete with an online mobile world, the tax had to keep falling and it was taken off the customers. That is the first point.

The second point relates to the averages Mr. Iceton referred to across the world and across the water. There is a serious difference there and the difference in those countries is that the tax is on profits. In Ireland it is on turnover. In an Irish betting shop, turnover tends to get higher when Ruby Walsh is riding a number of winners. Our turnover gets higher, our customers win money so they have more money in their pockets, they place more bets, turnover gets higher, so they pay higher tax when they are losing money. Our problem is the tax rate on Irish retail betting is on turnover and not on profits. If any of the members would like to check back on any of our submissions for the years since the foundation of our association, they will note that we have been calling for a model such as that in the UK where the tax is on profits. We would have no problem with paying tax on our profits. It is the tax on turnover that is unfair, inequitable, penal and is unique in Europe. In the other countries in Europe where it does apply, they are state-owned operations and they can set the margin of profit they make and that is how they pay it.

The last point I would make relates to tax and how operators are able to pay 50% gross profit tax in the UK plus a 10% horse racing levy. The reason they can do it in UK shops is that they have a different business model. They have machines. Some 60% of the revenue taken in British betting shops is by way of machines. Those terrible things we hear called FOBTs in the UK generate 60% to 65% of their income. We have a totally different business model in Irish shops where we still use a pen and paper and there are papers on the wall. We have also been calling for online betting to be taxed because to date it is only the retail betting operators that have been contributing to the fund. In every submission we have made, we have called for online operators to pay their share of tax. The taxation model cannot work with online poker, online bingo and all those operators being let off scot free. The only operators being taxed in this betting Bill are the sports books because turnover tax does not work in any of the other types of gambling, whereas if it were a profits tax, it would apply to them all in the morning.