Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)

The electricity grids may be, aspects of Coillte may be, gas basins may be, electric cables may be but the lottery is not. Everything about the national lottery is fuelled, furnished, finance, stocked, sourced, owned and possessed by the Irish people. It is ours. In every way it can be defined and in every which way we can argue it, it is ours. It belongs to us, lock, stock and barrel. It derives from us, it originates from us and it exists because of our individual voluntary pockets and purses.

The national lottery has done its job well over the past 25 years. In 2011, €231.9 million was used by Government for good causes. In the past 25 years €12 billion has been made in sales, €3.9 billion of which was for good causes. This is a good thing.

Online sales are seen as the new big cash cow. We know this from lotteries all over the world. How come it is seen as the easy way of delivering huge new profits? If it was that easy, why has it not been easy for the national lottery in Ireland? Surely, it cannot be the case that the Government plans to lift all sorts of restrictions around online sales just in time for an international owner to come in and to benefit.

In 1997, there was a report of the review group on the national lottery. The group made ten recommendations. I will not read them out. One of the recommendations suggested that the most disadvantaged groups within the voluntary and community sector should be given priority in the allocation of lottery funds. The ESRI backed this up in 2007 because it was the poor, the less educated, the less well-off and the disadvantaged who bought most of the lottery tickets.

In my first speech in the Seanad, I asked the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Deenihan, how he was going to alter and change this forever in the distribution of arts and cultural funds and how the disadvantaged could get to the top of the queue, or at least in a parallel queue, when it came to grants. The benefits are not shared equitably. It is merely another case of the great transfer con, but I did not get an answer.

This selling of the national lottery licence is a human equality rights issue and it is preparatory to the core of my argument. As Irish people, we own and fund the lottery. All the money from the lottery derives and originates from Ireland. It is ours entirely, absolutely, directly and voluntarily, and it belongs personally, privately and publicly to each citizen of this country.

It is now being suggested that we sell the licence for 20 years to anybody who can come up with approximately €500 million for the children's hospital and, of course, to answer Government requirements. The sale of the licence to operate the lottery will deliver funding of €300 million, €400 million or €500 million. Those who would put up that kind of money are buyers who expect a significant profit from the licence over the next 20 years. There is no way anyone pays out such an amount of money for an asset unless he or she expects that asset in time to make a handsome profit. We know what the lottery makes because it is ours, and I have stated it.

This is the core of the argument. Those who will provide this great new operator, portrayed as a kind of a saviour to the Irish people, with that tidy profit will be the Irish people. It will be mostly the poor, the less educated and the disadvantaged, returning to the ESRI argument and the great con transfer. Once again, within the lottery, the Irish people will put their hands in their pockets, take out their euro, buy their scratch cards, Lotto and Lotto Millions, and create a lottery pie, only from now on a great big slice of the pie will go straight into the coffers of the licence owner, whose sole reason for being involved is to make money for itself. It will be, once again, the greatest transfer of wealth from the pockets of the poor to the pursuit of privatisation.