Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies opposite. This is a broad range of amendments, all dealing with the establishment of the National Lottery regulator, including the terms and conditions etc. Section 7(1) provides for the establishment of the National Lottery regulator. Section 7(2) states: "The Regulator shall be appointed by the Minister on such terms and conditions, including remuneration, as the Minister may determine." Section 7(3) states: "The Regulator shall, subject to this Act, be independent in the performance of his or her functions." The fundamental question Deputy Fleming posed very strongly on Committee Stage and restated here was to ask why the Minister is establishing a new office to regulate the National Lottery, which is a reasonable one. I want to outline the approach as to why the Government deems it appropriate to have a regulator.

For the purposes of the competition for the next lottery licence, it is considered that a better outcome for the State can be arrived at if the office of the regulator is an independent office from Government. The Bill provides that the regulator's office will be fully funded by the operator. It is not intended to be an elaborate affair. The lottery is a significant business with a turnover of €750 million - hopefully that business can grow. There are significant administrative issues involved. There are issues of determination of games to determine what games are appropriate. I believe we need a small specialist unit to do that. It does not need a big staff. Hopefully it will have particular expertise and will be able to look at international best practice and so on rather than simply be - with all due respect to very competent civil servants who have done this to date - civil servants temporarily assigned among many other duties to do this. It will be a modest set-up.

As Deputy McDonald mentioned, a comprehensive gaming Bill is being prepared. I am not sure how long it will take for the Department of Justice and Equality to complete it. There is a general view that while we have robust tight regulation of the lottery, as we always had and will have under this new legislation, there is a considerable amount of other gambling, including small-scale casinos, some of which have appeared in my constituency, of which there seems to be no regulation. There is also online gambling. Coming home late from a meeting and turning on the television, one will be invited into these online casinos and God knows what. We need to have overarching legislation that is much broader in scope than what is envisaged here. If we are to have a gambling regulator - this is the discussion I have had with the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter - I believe this could be the nucleus of it. That is something I have said. Obviously that will be for further legislation the Minister for Justice and Equality will determine and bring forward. We can all debate that in due course, but a case for it can be made.

I will deal with some of the general issues raised and then go on to some of the specifics. Deputy Boyd Barrett made a general criticism of regulators. By and large international experience is that regulators work. However, regulators are only as good as the base legislation that we put down. The Deputy has rightly underscored the failure of financial regulation in the State. However, was that the failure of the regulator or was it because the regulator was disempowered by the overt policy of Government at the time, which wanted light touch regulation? That was the mantra. When a committee investigated it, there appeared to be a policy to break up the centralised power of the then Central Bank into a light-touch regulator. I believe it was the policy of Government not to have robust regulation, rather than the failure of the regulator to regulate. I am not as versed in the Taxi Regulator's failings or otherwise and I do not want to go into it. However, my main point is that the regulator is as effective as the legislation and the terms of reference given to that regulator. Internationally, regulators have proven very good consumer protectors to ensure that in an open market if there is free enterprise with competing - whether it is lotteries here or anything else, sometimes a monopoly - that it is done in a way that is consumer focused and implements social policy as determined by law and central Government and that is done in a clear transparent way.

While Deputy Fleming is opposed to the regulator in principle, he proposed that a regulator - should there be one - should be amenable to freedom of information and to the Oireachtas. Both of those will happen, which represents an important advance. Freedom of information requests will be available and the regulator can be brought before the appropriate Oireachtas committee to test policy and ensure it is fairly and manifestly implemented.

I disagree with Deputy Boyd Barrett in his general criticism of quangos. It is often portrayed that there is a huge phalanx of non-governmental organisations that are wasting money. By and large the big so-called quangos are the most effective agencies for delivering State policy. Some of them have large staffs, including Enterprise Ireland, whose chief executive I met this morning, IDA Ireland, the National Roads Authority and the Environmental Protection Agency. Such agencies and others are doing sterling work and have been downsized. We have carried out a root-and-branch analysis. I have asked every line manager to see what can be brought back into the Department, what manifestly should be done at arms-length from the Department, what can be done more efficiently and what can be amalgamated. We have done many amalgamations, all set out on my Department's website, and we have more to do. While I am not suggesting they are quangos, we have rationalised, for example, the vocational education sector very dramatically. There will be further rationalisation in the local government sector, some of which will be opposed and some of which will be accepted on the benches opposite. We have done a lot of that. We have a robust record on the quangos front after two years.

Deputy McDonald raised an important issue in amendment No. 17 on the cooling-off period. She rightly instances the programme for Government commitment. As she knows I have established a reform unit within my Department.

We will be very busy in committee in the coming months with regard to a number of Bills which will be published during this session. The heads of many of these Bills have already been discussed at committee, including on freedom of information legislation, a register of lobbyists, whistleblowing protection and inquiries, and all of these will come on stream. I was involved in whistleblowing legislation because I had personal experience which brought me before the High and Supreme Courts, and having outstanding legal liabilities of €500,000 is a vulnerable place to be. Whistleblowers should not be in this position, and neither should those who give information. We have a job of work to do on this front.

With regard to the cooling-off period we can all see cases in which, without knowing the individuals concerned, it is just not manifestly right that people would walk out of a regulatory or supervisory role in a Government Department or agency and become gamekeeper turned poacher in one fell swoop. We must have a cooling-off period. We have taken extensive submissions on this, and when we introduce the regulation of lobbying Bill we can have robust debate about it. I am open to hearing views on it. I want to be fair. I do not want to have the debate now, but the issue is presaged by this legislation with regard to establishing a cooling-off period.

We must be fair to people and not deprive them entirely of their livelihood for an unfair period. We examined what happens elsewhere. I suggest 12 months is an appropriate and proportionate cooling off period for people involved in a regulatory role before they get involved again. It is a judgment call and when the generality of the issue is determined on the lobbyist Bill I will listen to argument on it. Proportionately with regard to this legislation 12 months is the appropriate cooling-off period I would like to have supported in House.

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