Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I do. I have Sky at home although I should perhaps not refer to individual channels. I find it disconcerting to see it. One gets a free starter bet and one is off, apparently. I do not gamble either. I do not even back horses. I am sure I have many faults, but that is not one of them. I do not particularly like gambling.

Deputy Humphreys and, in more explicit terms, Deputy Fleming are referring to an area which is not germane to this Bill. It relates to the gambling legislation on which the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, is working in great detail. He will come forward with detailed, overarching legislation on these matters. In future, television will be one of the media through which we can access lottery tickets. By the looks of things, we will be shortly doing everything on the television. It will be a completely interactive set-up. We will probably not call it "television", we will call it something else. We will be able to do all our business on interactive screens. That is not for us to deal with.

The lottery has been very responsible and it will remain so. There are specific controls which can be put in place on lottery use. The Deputies are talking about playing blackjack and roulette. I am concerned about those matters, but they are not under my remit and they are not relevant to the Bill. We can have controls. The national lottery requires one to register and to prove one's identity and age to play. There are weekly and monthly expenditure limits where one plays online. I would like to see controls like that having much wider application. The question is whether we can do that in relation to gambling. I do not know if casinos are in Timbuktu or Singapore. I do not know what controls can be put in place.