Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Yes. These matters will be in the Minister's brief and consequently, my question pertains to the powers the Minister proposes to take on under this amendment. The amendment provides that the Minister will be involved in the appointment of directors to hold office for such term and upon such conditions as the Minister will deem fit, which is fine. I make a point about the lottery that the Minister may take into account. I do not expect him to have an answer to hand today. In general, the lottery makes an annual contribution of a couple of hundred million euro into the central fund of the Exchequer, which then is disbursed. The disbursement of funds will fall under the remit of the Minister's Department and as this is the source of the fund, I raise this point with him.

All Members are aware that in recent years, no lottery application processes for sport and recreation facilities were undertaken. They also are aware that many previous approvals still are working their way through the system and consequently, considerable sums of money are being paid out and work is being carried out. However, through the Estimates documentation published by the outgoing Government, which will be resubmitted to Members for discussion in committees in the next few days, I tabled a series of parliamentary questions on the use of national lottery funding through various Departments. In particular, I inquired in respect of the Departments of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Health, Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and Transport, Tourism and Sport. There may have been one or two others, as well as the Department of Finance itself. I asked where was the money being spent and the important point from the public expenditure perspective is that the answer I received from all the Departments was that individual projects are not now identified. For example, under the heading of social housing in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, the reply stated that this subhead was part-funded by national lottery funding. While the subhead may have covered €40 million in expenditure, €2 million of lottery funds may have been spent. However, no one knows or at least I was not provided with such information in replies to parliamentary questions that issued within the last week or two. I was not informed whether such money went to certain social housing schemes for a particular purpose or whether a particular mechanism was in place under which it could be drawn down.

My point is that under the Estimates processes, there is a complete lack of transparency on the destination of funding. The list of beneficiaries is available for all to see in the national lottery's annual reports and information on who receives grants under the sports capital project also is published. While they are specific projects, money that goes into the Departments of the Environment, Community and Local Government or Health simply gets lost. It appears to be a simple substitute for Exchequer money, which was not the original intention. The Minister should try to disaggregate that expenditure to ascertain whether it is being used for a specific purpose, as was originally intended. After the legislation has been enacted and when the Minister has a few minutes, I urge him to get his staff to try to disaggregate this expenditure from the system.

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