Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have faced difficult issues, including negotiating with the troika on the assets we should sell. I would rather sell no asset. However, during the programme for Government negotiations with Fine Gael, we agreed a package of measures, not all of which I was enthusiastic about, but all of which I could live with. The Government wanted to have a few flagship achievements in areas that are really important for the country. In that context - it cannot be disaggregated as a number of Senators have suggested - we wanted to build a national children's hospital even though I had to downsize the public capital programme. Uniquely in all the capital expenditure I changed, the one area I did not change was the health spend - we left the health capital allocation unchanged. Other areas, for example transport, I am afraid were very significantly downsized.

I knew there was pressure on the built infrastructure of our hospitals and that we had to embark on a new programme of primary-care centres and I did not want to impact upon that. That meant there was no scope for a children's hospital and we needed to decide whether we wanted it and if there was a means to get it. As Senator Hayden said, I believe this was a reasonable way of ascertaining whether we could get better value now for jobs, development and investment from our asset package than we have. I knew the national lottery licence was due to expire. The first range of discussions I had with a number of Senators here related to not having the licence at all. I believe a motion before the House called on me to, almost, fix the result to ensure an Irish winner, but I cannot do that. I must allow for open tendering for the licence.

Those who are critical of the Bill are right to this extent. We constructed it on a different basis in order to get the upfront payment. That is it is a longer term and on a different basis. However, we have included enormous safeguards some of which I would like to outline. Committee and Report Stages will afford me the opportunity to go through this in some detail. While I fully accept the bona fides of those who spoke in the debate, I trust people will accept my bona fides in this regard.

It is my objective to maximise the income flow to good causes - I will go through this in more detail when we get to it. It will be linked to the gross gambling reserves and not to the gross sales. There will be a number of different products. For example, with scratch cards, the payout is 65%.

I want to be able to construct a package which will ensure that there will be a robust stream of money for good causes into the future and I want said stream to be at least as good as that which has obtained up to now.

The licence will not be alterable by the regulator or anyone else.