Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Overview of Operations of the National Lottery: Discussion
1:30 pm
Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I will address the issue of unregulated, offshore, bet on lottery operators, as they are called. The licensed operator has raised this issue. It has been presented that they are masquerading as being the national lottery or certainly giving people the impression that, by betting through on these platforms, they are betting on the national lottery. They are in fact, because they are betting on the outcome of the national lottery, as I understand it. They have a remote bookmaker licence issued by the Irish national excise licence office. There have been 15 such licences issued. However, they are unregulated in the Irish market. Is that correct and what impact are they having? Is there any quantification of how much money people in Ireland are spending through these unregulated offshore betting operators?