Mr. Frank Flannery:

It is hard to rewind history, but before the national lottery came into being, the Rehab Group accounted for 25% of the lottery market; other charity lotteries would have accounted for a great deal of the rest, while the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes and other events made up the market. Had the Irish market developed in a free and openly competitive way, the share of the market the charity sector would have now would be at least equal to that in the Dutch example I used. Given that we had the expertise, we would be running at 30% of the current turnover of the national lottery, which would be a turnover of €250 million generating a profit of between €60 million and €80 million a year. That would have a dramatic and transformative impact on the sector. I am just giving the numbers off the top of my head, but broadly that is the scale. That has not happened because of the arrangement made and a lottery compensation fund was put in place to recognise the significant advantage of the State. This was done in an agreed and co-operative way between the not-for-profit sector and the State in recognition of the fact that both had interests and both needed to be looked after. We were broadly in favour, as we always are, of facilitating the State to achieve its objective. As a result, the immediate loss of revenue to the sector is of the order of €6 million to €7 million a year, which is a significant amount of money.