Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

On my own initiative, I included private members' gaming clubs, which have sprouted around the country, under the legislation because they have not been regulated and it was necessary to bring such clubs under some form of regulation, particularly given the large sums that wash through them.

We are steering away from the purpose of the Bill but the Deputy's questions are about money laundering generally. He referred to the issue of casinos. We have debated this many times on Question Time. I have no problem answering questions about the issue publicised last weekend. When a project was originally publicised in my locality approximately 18 months, I was asked for a comment by my local newspaper. I said I very much welcomed a new major leisure and sporting facility, which had the potential to create hundreds of jobs in my locality. My home town, Dundalk, through its local authorities, a task force on economic development and all the other agencies promoting the town, had earmarked two areas in which it could have a future as the lead town in the country. One was renewable energy research. When I served as Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, I was instrumental in ensuring Sustainable Energy Ireland was decentralised to my home town and it is connected to Dundalk Institute of Technology, which has a fine research facility with a wind turbine that provides 75% of the energy needs of the institute. That is one aspect Dundalk wishes to promote.

The second aspect is we want to become the leisure capital of Ireland. We have the only indoor Olympics sized ice dome in Ireland. The Irish ice hockey association has the franchise for the dome and I was a good supporter of it. We have an all-weather racing and greyhound track. It is the only facility in Europe, if not the world, where greyhounds and horses race together. It is a fine facility and while I do not know one end of a horse from another, I was a tremendous supporter of that facility, as were the former Minister for Agriculture and Food, Joe Walsh, and the former Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Deputy John O'Donoghue.

This proposed project fitted easily into that. The planning application for this makes no mention of a casino for the simple reason that no legislation is in place to regulate casinos. When I was appointed to this portfolio, a major report was on my desk regarding our gambling architecture. It was commissioned by one of my predecessors, Michael McDowell, and I was informed when I became Minister that there had been an agreement that there would be an all-party approach to dealing with the report but the Labour Party clearly indicated that it was against that unless there was a commitment that fixed odds betting terminals, FOBTs, would not be included. I indicated I was not in favour of FOBTs and I would not legislate for them as Minister but I was disinclined to remove references to them because they were part of the consideration of the report.

Fine Gael was an enthusiastic supporter of an all-party approach. Deputy Barrett had been nominated as the agreed chairman of the all-party committee.

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