Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Minister of State to recommit section 12 to Committee Stage so that we can deal with the substantive issue. A resolution can be found to this problem. I spoke to the Minister of State last night and gave him the example of the case across the Border in Northern Ireland. A tiered system is in place there where commercial bingo operations come under a different regulatory regime than community events. In our discussions yesterday, the Minister of State confirmed that there would not be a prohibition on communities topping up prizes over and above the 50% payment and bringing that up to 110%, as referred to in the previous example.

That requires people to carry substantial additional cash floats in parish halls around the country. We should not be encouraging people in communities that have been left vulnerable to robbery because of Garda station closures, etc., to carry significant amounts of money. The easiest way to deal with this is to recommit the Bill in respect of section 12 to enable a simple amendment to be made which would clarify our intention to provide for a tiered process that covers the commercial operators, which the Minister of State is trying to address in this legislation, and the community bingo events across the country, which we want to allow to continue to function as they have functioned up to now.

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