Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is useful to have a debate like this and to exchange views. There is a difference of opinion here. The lottery is not shrinking. Revenues are growing. We had very strong growth from 2020 to 2021 of 14%. In 2020, €254 million of money was allocated for good causes, while €289 million was allocated in 2021. The question that arises is: what is the problem we are trying to solve? The problem is notional losses of money being bet on national lottery numbers, which is not resulting in increased funding for good causes. The question is: how do we remedy that? How can we take some of that money or what is the right approach?

With that in mind, we have commissioned an outside report. It is good to go outside of the Department, the Government and the political system and to ask what someone else thinks. The consultants will come back with their report in a couple of months and it will be interesting for us to read it. We have asked them what happens in other jurisdictions. There have been approaches in other jurisdictions. Senators Ward and Carrigy probably looked at this. How have other jurisdictions managed this and what is legally feasible? Different things may be feasible compared with our situation where this has operated for 30 years. What is the right way to do this? Is this the right approach to take on it? Is there another way to do this - for example, putting a levy on bookmakers? Is that feasible? We are happy to look at that as well.

Transparency matters because in any system where people do not know where the money goes and they are not clear where it is, that is not good. It could be suppressing lottery sales. One of the first things I did when I entered the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was to ask: where is the lottery money going, how is it allocated and what is the scheme for that? At the time roughly €250 million was allocated for good causes. However, when I looked at the revised Estimates, it was more than €400 million. My understanding is that the revised Estimates were a combination of lottery funding plus other funds. In any system where there is aggregate funding on the line and the breakdown is not known, it is not clear enough.

There are very large amounts of money being allocated to five different Departments. When you are allocating sums of money that are now approaching €333 million, you need to know very transparently how those decisions are being made, what that allocation scheme is, what people can expect-----