Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I know. I will pretend that it was not parties in here which supported it. There are parties here that opposed it. The decision was a bad one. The company cannot be treated as any other private company because there is a good causes fund from which the public benefits. It is in the public interest that the fund remain at a high level. It is also in the public interest to renew the licence at some stage, potentially involving some other company. In the meantime, we want a healthy fund and as many clubs as possible to benefit. That is a reasonable public objective. I would not have chosen the private company route but that is how matters stand.

I listened to what the Minister of State said. Some of the provisions are technical but, on the principal point, it is increasingly the case that very many people are using online companies to bet on the lotto. There are other elements also, involving bookmakers and all the rest of it, but the question of catching the first element is the difficulty in drafting the Bill as a whole. A very substantial sum is potentially being lost out on. Most European jurisdictions protect their national lotteries and the funds that emanate from them. Could the Minister of state offer a comment on that or clarify matters? The current position might be healthy but if the drift continues in the direction of commercially operated lotteries with no public benefit, then the national lottery will be undermined. Nobody wants to go near a lottery of Bride Rovers or Terenure Tidy Towns, for example, and that is not proposed in this amendment. The Minister of State can speculate on what might happen in the future but it is not anticipated in this amendment. This amendment will not do what he describes.