Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his patience. There are only seven Government Members present but I will not call a quorum. It says a great deal about the interest in this issue. Perhaps Members have not examined it deeply and do not understand what it is happening.

International best practice shows that lotteries run out of steam and need to be regenerated. The lottery licence is due to be renegotiated and re-tendered according to the Minister but regeneration does not necessarily mean sale. The problem is that the Minister is selling the lottery licence to the highest bidder from outside the State for an up-front payment. I do not know anybody in Ireland who has between €400 and €600 million. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform stated, "We are in a national crisis we must think outside the box". This is true but why are we defining thinking outside the box as sale or up-front payment? The Minister argues that the Government would like to secure a significant sum that will enable it to invest a large chunk in building the new national children's hospital. I am thinking outside the box and we could get the money for the children's hospital from a dedicated weekly draw over a five to seven year period. There is no evidence to suggest that other draws would suffer and the British did this for the Olympics.

The Minister says we engaged with the troika and "we stated that we would sell up to €3 billion of state assets excluding the national lottery". The national lottery licence was not to be included in the process but the Minister did so with a few trendy thinkers from New South Wales. The Minister believes that the sale of the licence will not damage the lottery but he is wrong. Following this sale we will not own our lottery licence for 20 years but a private gaming consortium of outside private buyers will. If the House wants an example of damage, it should try the privatisation of public money for gaming private profit. I cannot think of a better example of damage in Ireland.

The Minister thinks that I am resistant to reform and change but I am not. The licence sale is not about reform or change; it is about money up front - a fast buck from the highest bidder. Senators must consider that a €500 million up-front payment to buy the lottery licence for 20 years is outside politics, parties and politicians and they should regard it as such when they vote. Senators need to ask themselves some simple questions. If the national lottery license is so valuable, why is it being sold? Do they think, in the best part of their heart beat, that is right to sell it off for 20 years? If the sale is a success, can we not keep that success for ourselves? Why are we selling the family silver for the up-front payment? The reason somebody would give the Government that amount is healthy profit, which will be generated by the opening up of online gambling and the turnover from that. I am not trying to hold back life at the door and I do not have a problem with online sales but let us have online gambling for ourselves. We should restrict or semi-restrict it and we should control and profit by it solely for ourselves. A sale to a private gaming consortium is a short-term fix, which takes that option away.

Senators have tried to reassure me - and one is present - that the great ring-fencing of good causes is a reason such a sale makes no difference. There are two answers to that. First, the people own all the money generated - €763 million per year - the prizes, marketing and the administration and not just the good causes. Second, regardless of ring-fencing good causes or anything else, money has to be found to pay back the €500 million provided by the buyers. They are not Santa Claus and they are not altruistic. They are private gaming consortia and to make the buyers a healthy profit over 20 years, the money will come from us through online sales because this is the big growth area; otherwise the buyers would not be interested

The Government parties are giving away the right for us as a nation to make huge profits over many years for ourselves because they want a fast buck, up-front payment and the licence holder will make a profit on that. The greatest and most important question is how much will be extracted as a profit from the up-front payment and how much will continue to be extracted over 20 years to justify the €500 million charge and the interest on it. No up-front payment is worth that quick fix. What happens if the licence holder has given us €500 million and he is not generating his profit? Will we have to pump up the sales? What happens if everything gets a little looser? What if online sales turn into a social disaster? When we are in control, we can tighten regulations but when we are not, we will have to allow the buyers to continue to extract its profits regardless.

I believe gambling will be an issue in the future. I am concerned about the plethora of new casinos opening in towns all over the country. The volume of online gambling is also huge. We seem to have no control over this and will need to have a proper discussion on the issue. The Minister said that. Genuine online gambling will be a different way of playing the lottery. Why can we not retain control of its profits?

There is also another huge problem about which no one is speaking. If the State controls the gaming consortium bidders too much, the price will go down to an insultingly low level. Without control, there could be an explosion of gambling. It is, therefore, Hobson's choice for the Minister and it is not worth it. We are always bending over backwards in this country, doffing the cap to the likes of Shell and BP, to the pharmaceutical companies and to Eircom. We know what happened with the latter company.

What will happen to the 108 national lottery jobs? Where is the written guarantee for them? Will they be assimilated back into An Post? If so, where is the written agreement on this? What has An Post said, agreed and put in writing about this? If not, who will pay the staff pensions and how much will it cost? No Senators can tell me that he or she believes in this sale. How can one believe in a sale that will privatise public money in a private gaming consortium? How can one believe in a sale that incentivises the opening up of online gambling to profit a private gaming company off the island? Is this the kind of judgment the Upper House should be about, as it signs off on decisions such as this? It is not the kind of Upper House I thought I was entering two years ago. People say it does not matter, that I am only grumbling. That is correct but it is €763 million a year of our money and it belongs to us. Where are the ethics in this?

Where is the ethics in this? I am reminded of a quote from the late comedian Peter Cook: "We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war." I have to accept that my speaking against what the Minister of State proposes is somewhat futile because there is an overwhelming majority under the Whip here which ensures that whatever Ministers do or propose, however misguided, will be approved. It is the responsibility of all Senators to question perceived wisdom and decisions, to examine those matters where the consensus is misguided and to hold a mirror to actions which are not in the best interests of the Irish people. This is not in the best interest of the Irish people. The Minister of State with responsibility for public service reform, Deputy Hayes, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, have told us that we are selling the national lottery but we need to ask why somebody from the private sector would want our lottery licence. The duty of those who manage and lead the private sector body is to maximise shareholder value. This is done by getting the best financial return. It follows then that an investor will buy our lottery licence because it is convinced and has proof that return on this investment will ensure a greater profit than any other venture into which they might put their money. The Irish national lottery licence is one of the greatest cash cows in Europe. If our lottery can ensure such a rich reward for the private sector why can it not do the same for the State?

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and his colleagues constantly remind us of their ambition to regain our national economy and our sovereignty, to become the independent country that we could be, to exit the bailout, to be free from the troika. If the Minister is determined that we should control our own destiny why will he not think inside the box and allow us to run our own lottery with the development of online gambling by the Irish, for the Irish, and maximise returns to the Irish rather than sell it to an outside private gaming consortium?

I find it ironic that in the anniversary of the 1913 Lock-out a Labour Party Minister is allying himself more with the descendants of William Martin Murphy than with those of Jim Larkin. The Minister is about to destroy a lottery licence owned by the people, operated by a State agency for the Irish people, for Ireland's public good and replace it with a private profit platform for an offshore gaming consortium, for an upfront payment. It is not worth it.