Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the good work the national lottery has done in the past. A total of €12 billion has been invested in various areas over a 25-year period. Many areas have benefited, such as Carrigart, Clonmany, Carrickmacross and Castlecoote. Money was distributed to many areas that otherwise would not have got such benefits.

According to the Minister, there is a need to tender for the outsourcing of the licence but it is important to ensure that we enshrine in the legislation that good causes will benefit. Some might argue that the model that was previously in operation was used by politicians to buy votes but the contrary was the case. It was an exercise in local democracy in action where local politicians were in touch with their constituency base and realised that there were small parishes and areas that would not otherwise have funding to build a new sports centre, an extension onto a sports club or to provide a community centre or service. Politicians are the ones who ensured that the €12 billion was spread out as evenly as possible in their constituencies and fought tooth and nail to ensure that would happen.

We should not avoid the rationale behind the positive functioning of the lottery system. One could ask why such a mechanism was required. One could point to the centralising of Exchequer funding and the priority given to larger projects for worthy needs such as hospitals, the provision of bigger roads, sewerage schemes and water schemes. The bulk of funding goes to core areas where population centres are concentrated. There is a constant fight in rural areas for funding that would not otherwise be available to them. It is important in the context of a debate on the lottery to examine the reason rural, isolated areas are always fighting for the crumbs of its share of the pie.

I could always argue the toss in my county which historically and traditionally had less investment than other parts of the country in terms of national distribution. One only has to look at the motorway systems between Dublin and Galway, Dublin and Limerick, Dublin and Belfast and Dublin and Cork. Each of those cities also has a rail service. There is a national psyche in terms of peripheral areas losing out to core areas. I use the example of my county, but when one brings it to a micro-level, in every county, including populated parts of Deputy Terence Flanagan’s constituency, areas are losing out on investment. Unfortunately, that is the world in which we are living. We must continue to ask why. We must examine the current banking system. I wish to allude to a report compiled by Dr. James Deeny a number of years ago when he worked as a locum doctor in the Fanad Peninsula.

He argued that, in that geographical area, there was upwards of £1 million on deposit at that time in the 1970s. He asked how that money on deposit was working for the area and he argued that the banking system operating at the time was using that capital as collateral - as liquidity - to attract further investment into the bigger areas. We should use the opportunity of this debate to discuss the way our government system and banking system are working for the rural areas, as there is a constant drag on capital out of areas, and how we can make our money on deposit in rural areas work for the people and the communities.

I have reservations about the awarding of this licence to an external source but I ask the Minister to examine all the suggestions from both sides of the House in terms of enshrining the good cause element in it. That is a priority.

See this speech in context