Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to say this, because I do not get the opportunity to do so in that I do not know when the regulator of the national lottery last appeared before the committee, but I believe the regulator needs to make her voice heard. I hope that she makes her voice heard in the appropriate manner because - forgive me for using this language but I am trying to think of a better way - hiding behind what it says in the Act is not good enough. What the regulator is overseeing is a hugely aggressive promotion of the national lottery. I read an article that appeared in The Sunday Times last year and it was about a pilot project in a number of stores, including Tesco, Dunnes Stores and SuperValu, where scratch card card dispensers containing up to 19 different games were installed in every checkout aisle.

When I read that I was reminded of when I got elected to the Houses of the Oireachtas first. I was in the Seanad and I had the pleasure of sharing the backbenches with former Senator, Feargal Quinn, who imparted many stories during the couple of years I was there, one of which was that he was the person who moved sweets from the checkouts. First he made one aisle free of sweets, because of the pressure it placed on parents, and then he went further. Now we have gambling in every single aisle with these dispensers. What do the dispensers look like? They look like the same thing from which one would buy a packet of Mentos, a Mars bar or such like. It is a nice plastic cage, designed in that way not by accident, but deliberately. This is how one sells sweets in shops and this is how we now sell scratch cards, which surveys show is the most accessible type of gambling for our teenagers. We have not heard any public commentary on that in the context of the regulator.

I suggest the regulator needs to make her voice heard. Maybe she thinks it is okay but I would say it is not okay, and we will say this to the Government and to the Minister. There is a responsibility on the regulator. It is the job of the regulator to apply the law, and I see no fault in the way the regulator is applying the law to her job, but there is an onus on regulators to say the law is not robust enough or does not go far enough.

I have not heard that from the regulator in respect of what is happening with the national lottery. The second point I want to make-----