Ms Carol Boate:

It is up to the Oireachtas and the Department to decide what kind of gambling it wishes to allow. The answer is not obvious or clear-cut because while one is allowed to set up a national lottery monopoly under EU law, one is not allowed to do everything one would wish to protect it. The Department is actively looking to see the exact scale of this industry, the scale of threat it represents, what would be a response that would be in line with EU law, and to what extent they are attracting euros from the national lottery and good causes into these offshore or other companies. None of that is clear, so that needs to be established and then an appropriate response chosen.