Ms Sharon Byrne:

I am sure all of us have seen it. I certainly saw it on my way to a wedding in Navan one day. We stopped in the pub for a drink on the way, the racing was on the television and here was a guy sitting in a corner with a laptop taking bets. Out of curiosity, I went over to have a look. His screen was behind him with all the betting on it, he had a wad of cash as thick as one you would see in the movies or on "The Sopranos" and he was taking bets with not a bother on him. There was no betting tax, no age controls, no safer gambling measures - nothing. This is an issue we repeatedly raised with the Department of Justice and An Garda Síochána. It is prevalent all over Ireland.

Regarding banning advertising, our operators are licensed. It is a licensed product for adults. We advertise our products within the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland guidelines and the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland guidelines. To enhance those guidelines, we brought in our safer gambling code at the beginning of January. This includes a pre-watershed ban on Irish channels, including a whistle-to-whistle ban on those sporting programmes on which we advertise. However we have a difficulty in that we cannot stop international operators advertising on channels that are not Irish such as Sky channels.

This is another reason that the regulator is so important. It can bring in guidelines, more suitable to the Irish marketplace and apply them to all operators and all channels. The sooner the regulator comes into place the better.