Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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On the betting tax, at the end of the Government’s last term and since then, the Government and the Department of Finance have been examining how we can collect betting revenue from online betting and remote betting. That is a much more complicated process than one might think. We have a number of different online platforms where betting takes place. We have betting exchanges and online bookies and some companies do both. We must also ensure that if somebody is operating outside of the State but taking bets from Irish punters that we are capturing the revenue. We needed to design a system that ensures that when people make a bet in Ireland online, whether the bookie facilitating the platform is based in Ireland or elsewhere, that we get a tax take or duty take from each bet. We have a system now that will allow us to do that which will be based on a licence fee to take online and remote bets from people in Ireland.

Linked to that licence fee they will have to declare their turnover and pay a duty on that turnover. In the case of vetting exchanges, they will be paying a tax in terms of the financial cost of facilitating the transactions. We will be able to debate the detail of that when this legislation comes before the Dáil. I look forward to that.