Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)

It does not make any sense to put the lottery up for sale. It is our greatest and most valuable worthwhile resource, and why sell it?

I put it to Senators that we would be better selling the Book of Kells. If we were to sell the Book of Kells to some museum in Australia, Canada or London for €500 million, we could come home and put that money in our pocket. We might have fewer Americans around but we would still have the €500 million in our pockets. If we sell the lottery for €500 million to a person, an organisation, a syndicate, a cash-rich and ready offshore pension fund, a wealthy billionaire or a parallel lottery organisation in some other country which may buy it for €300 million, €400 million or €500 million, that will not be the end of it. We will give back millions of euro in interest, over and above any lottery profit, and we will do so for 20 years. We will be paying, out of the pockets of the Irish people, interest on what belongs to us, what we own and what we fund ourselves, and I cannot think of anything more unethical. We will be giving away our lottery licence to strangers and paying them to take the money out of our pockets.

It is not in the Minister's gift to sell the lottery to anybody but the Irish to run it. It is only in his gift to keep the lottery and ensure it is kept and controlled under the umbrella of the Government of the Irish people.

One of the big moments of his reassurance has been that we need not worry, that the cash for good causes will be ring-fenced. Some 30.5% of sales will be ring-fenced for good causes. Is the Minister sure it is that simple? Is he quite sure that he can slap down that stipulation and not upset the balance of the different games? Is he quite sure about that calculation?

The Minister may find a buyer who is sufficiently cash rich and ready to pay up for this licence - a pension fund in another country prepared to hold out for some time for the great day when the profit comes home. He may portray all of this as a kind of triumph but no matter how long a potential buyer might have to wait for a big profit, the only reason a buyer will buy this licence is because in time that buyer will get a huge profit. That profit will come from one place - the pockets and the dreams of the Irish people.

It is incumbent on the Minister to sit down with as many people as he needs, including me, to come up with creative ideas to find the money to build the children's hospital. I have plenty of ideas as to how he might do that. I suggest we borrow the money ourselves, and we might start with Mr. Boucher in Bank of Ireland to which we gave €3.75 billion, and whom we have not seen since. If the Minister wants to ring-fence something, why not ask the Irish people to ring-fence a particular draw on a Wednesday night for the children's hospital and I guarantee he might have the money within six years. That way he would keep the lottery within the control of the State and the people who own it and its profits.

My argument is not about transparency, about where the Exchequer begins and lottery gifts end or about the disadvantaged, although they have a huge part to play. It is about the thoughtlessness of selling the national lottery on the basis of a 20-year contract, without having identified a more creative way to find the money necessary to fund the children's hospital project. What I am concerned about is Irish people's pockets being pilfered in order to bolster the profits of others.

The national lottery is the greatest gift the disadvantaged and the poor could give to the State. It is rather like St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, which was built with the pennies of the poor. It is a gift to the State and it is in the Government's gift not to sell it. The Government has the power to ensure that everything it does in respect of the licensing, operation and profits relating to the lottery parallels the gift to which I refer. The Government also has the power to ensure that the licence remains within the control of the State and that the profits relating to the lottery remain in the pockets of all Irish citizens.