Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 29:

In page 15, between lines 30 and 31, to insert the following:“(2) The operator shall be resident in the State.”.

This is a straightforward amendment which provides that the operator shall be resident in the State. We touched on this topic on Committee Stage and we spoke about the operator being from a country outside the EU. I asked the Minister if he could give a guarantee that the operator will be subject to corporation tax on the profits they make in the State from the national lottery. I do not believe I got an answer on that. The Minister says that the successful applicant will have to operate through a company. That is fine. One can have a company registered here but the parent company can have its tax affairs located in the Bahamas. This is something that can be included in the licence, because the Minister has not drafted it yet. When the Minister goes to tender for the licence one of the conditions should be that the successful operator will pay corporation tax on the profits they make from the national lottery in this State. It is a straightforward point.

This could damage the national lottery. Until now, An Post and the subsidiary operating the lottery on behalf of the State were not subject to corporation tax. They only received a fee and did not make profits from it. They received a management fee of a set percentage. This company, depending on how successful it is with the interactive games, has the potential to make substantially more profits than An Post ever did through its fee arrangement. Companies will only get involved if there is a profit to be made. The Irish people would think it a very bad day if we passed legislation providing for a new national lottery licence, without ring-fencing money for the children's hospital, which also provided that the profits the operator will make will not be subject to corporation tax as a company in this State. We must address this. It must be included in the licence.

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