Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 17 Jun 1976

Vol. 84 No. 4

Public Hospitals (Amendment) Bill, 1976: Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for Justice (Mr. Cooney)

The Public Hospitals Acts, 1933 to 1940, authorise the holding of sweeps in aid of the Hospitals Trust Fund by sweepstake committees appointed by the governing bodies of hospitals and provide that the scheme for each sweep must be sanctioned by the Minister for Justice. The Acts provide that the amount of the net receipts of any sweep which may be applied to the payment of expenses must not exceed 30 per cent or such lower percentage as the Minister for Justice when sanctioning the scheme for any sweepstake may determine. They also provide that the balance of the net receipts after payment of expenses, prizes and stamp duty must be paid into the Hospitals Trust Fund.

The Hospitals Trust Fund is managed by the Hospitals Trust Board, a body appointed by the Minister for Health, and payments out of the fund are made to hospitals and nursing organisations on the directions of the Minister for Health. Section 6 of the Public Hospitals Act, 1933, provides that whenever the participating hospitals propose to hold a sweepstake, a sweepstake committee must prepare and submit to the Minister for Justice a scheme specifying, among other things, particulars of the prizes intended to be distributed, the date, place and manner of the draw, the price of tickets, the maximum amount which may be expended by way of commission, prizes or other remuneration in relation to the sale of tickets, the proportion of free tickets to be allotted as reward to sellers, the date on which the sale of tickets is to commence, and the name of the chartered accountant who is to audit the accounts relating to the sweepstake.

The purpose of the Bill is to increase the expenses allowable to the promoters of sweepstakes held under the Public Hospitals Acts, 1933 to 1940, from 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the net receipts and to increase from 20 per cent to 30 per cent the minimum amount of the net receipts of a sweepstake that must go to the Hospitals Trust Board and to the Exchequer by way of stamp duty. The audited accounts of the sweepstakes held in the last two years indicate that the expenses of the promoters have exceeded 30 per cent of the net receipts and they have said that it is impossible for them to continue to run the sweepstakes within the limits of the expenses allowed by the Acts. The second provision in relation to the amount payable to the Hospitals Trust Board together with stamp duty merely gives statutory force to what has been sanctioned by me in the scheme for each sweepstake since October, 1975.

Up to 1973 the amount spent on promoters expenses for each sweepstake was approximately 25 per cent of the net receipts. Gradually through 1973 that percentage crept up almost to the statutory limit of 30 per cent. In the first sweep in 1974 the expenses amounted to 29.32 per cent and the promoters, Hospitals Trust (1940) Ltd. indicated that the figure could not continue to be contained within the limit of 30 per cent because of increasing cost of salaries, wages, stationery, printing, postage and so on. In 1974 the promoters sought an increase in the price of sweep tickets from £1 to £2 and an increase in the super prize from £200,000 to £400,000. These changes came into effect in relation to the Cambridgeshire, 1975, which was run in October, 1975, and in the meantime the actual expenses incurred in running sweepstakes in 1974 and in the first half of 1975 were in excess of 30 per cent of the net receipts. Figures taken from the audited accounts show that the expenses in relation to the Cambridgeshire, 1974 were 32.46 per cent, the Sweeps Hurdle, 1974, 32.19 per cent, the Lincoln, 1975, 34.44 per cent and the Irish Sweeps Derby, 1975, 35.68 per cent.

The expenses in excess of 30 per cent of the net receipts of these sweepstakes had to be borne by the promoters and this excess amounted to over £440,000 for the four sweeps. The promoters normally receive a fee for managing and organising a sweepstake but in the cases I have instanced where the expenses were in excess of 30 per cent this fee was not paid. The Cambridgeshire, 1975, which was the first sweep where £2 was charged for a ticket and a super prize of £400,000 given showed an improvement and the expenses of that sweepstake were 30.05 per cent of the net receipts. The audited accounts for the Irish Sweeps Hurdle, 1975, which is the latest sweep for which accounts are available, show that the expenses for that sweepstake came to 34.25 per cent of the net receipts.

In the light of these figures the Government accept that the statutory 30 per cent limitation is no longer realistic. The alternative to allowing the increase now sought is to see the sweeps go out of business with the consequent loss of direct employment to nearly a thousand people and a loss of a steady source of income to hospitals, as well as a loss of revenue in stamp duty. The salaries, wages and State insurance of employees now runs in excess of £2 million a year while expenses on such things as stationery, printing, postage, advertising and so on all help to generate employment and keep people in their jobs. In the circumstances it seems reasonable to raise the statutory limitation on the amount that may be paid on expenses from 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the net receipts and section 1, subsection (2) (a), of the Bill provides accordingly.

Section 1, subsection (2) (c), proposes that the amount of the net receipts of a sweepstake that must go to the Hospitals Trust Board together with stamp duty shall be not less than 30 per cent. This is to replace the present requirement that not less than 20 per cent of the net receipts must be so paid. When approving the increase in the price of tickets from £1 to £2 and the increase in the super prize from £200,000 to £400,000, the Government made it a condition that this amount should be increased to a minimum of 30 per cent of the net receipts and accordingly the proposal in the Bill when enacted will, as I have mentioned already, do no more than give statutory force to an existing arrangement which has been provided for by me in the scheme for each sweepstake since the price of a ticket was increased to £2. Senators might wish to know that the total amount paid to the Hospitals Trust Fund from sweepstakes up to and including the Irish Sweeps Hurdle, 1975, was over £82 million.

I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Dolan

We on this side of the House accept this Bill. It is only fair to say that we feel it is necessary in view of the increases that have taken place in practically every sphere. It is therefore natural to expect that there would be an increase in the running costs of the sweepstakes. Over the years the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes have contributed approximately £82 million to the benefit of our hospitals and nursing organisations. This is a very laudable occupation in which to be engaged, helping in one way or another to alleviate the sufferings of our people including the aged, infirm, improving the conditions of those people who look after them, and also the standards of our hospitals.

Despite the adverse criticism that may have come from many sources over the years the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes have done a very efficient job in running the sweeps. I am also concerned at the Minister saying that were this request not accepted, there would be a further loss of jobs for approximately 1,000 people. We know that the people who work in the sweepstakes office do so in fairly good conditions and receive a decent remuneration. In view of the number of people unemployed at present it would be a catastrophe to add another 1,000 people to that number. Were a sweepstake so long in existence allowed to disappear now it would take many years to build it up again, not alone at home but abroad. For those reasons I am in agreement with the Minister's proposals in this Bill.

Mr. Horgan

I feel bound to say that, even though the whole sweepstake operation is one which is to a large extent abhorrent to me, I could not vote against this Bill in conscience because of the very substantial implications, particularly with regard to employment, mentioned by the Minister in his opening speech. It could be said that if we refused to pass this Bill or something of that sort, the real blame for the subsequent unemployment would not rest on the Members of this House, or Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas generally, but on the promoters of the sweepstake fund.

This might even be true. It might be a nice political point to make. But, unfortunately, the difference would be academic to the people concerned who might very well lose their jobs and who would not be too concerned about the reason for having lost them. I suspect that in very many cases these people are relatively unemployable elsewhere and that to this extent the employment quotient of the whole sweepstake operation is an important aspect of it. I would go further and say that it is now perhaps the most important aspect of the sweepstake operation. The whole sweepstake operation has, it seems to me, changed fairly rapidly over the decades in which it has been in operation. I mean to say, that its purpose has changed and the degree to which it is contributing to the welfare of the Irish health service and hospital system has also diminished. It is almost undeniable that the proportion of the moneys now being spent on our health service which comes from the sweep is now very much smaller than it was when the Sweep started.

We must remember that it is quite a long time ago since the Sweep started. Circumstances were different then. It seemed to be perhaps quite reasonable at the time to embark on this way of making money for the hospitals. I would have preferred if a sweepstake was to be run to benefit the hospitals, that it should be wholly a publicly-run operation. I am not necessarily in favour of a sweepstake at all. But, if we are to have one, we should have a wholly public one rather than have this somewhat odd situation in which you have a committee appointed by the Minister for Health under an Act of this Parliament employing a private company to run the sweepstake for it.

The difficulties that have caused this Bill to come before us are basically ones relating to the operation carried out by this private company. One of the other things that has changed in the intervening period is that the Irish Sweepstake—which was, I suspect, for some time regarded as a rather unique experiment in raising funds for charity —has caused a growing amount of adverse comment in this country and abroad. It is widely said that sale of tickets in some jurisdictions is illegal. We have the unhappy, to put it no more bluntly, situation of a committee established by an Act of this Parliament employing a company which is engaged in illegal acts in other jurisdictions. This is the company whose fortunes we are dealing with today to a certain extent.

One of the other changes that has taken place is, as the Minister outlined in his speech, that the cost of running this operation has gone up to the most inordinate degree. We are now in the situation in which we are going to have to allow for 40 per cent of the take to be payable in expenses. In other words, we are going to have to allow four pounds to be spent to get in every five. We seem to be very close to the point at which the viability of the whole operation must be open to question. We have created, if you like, a huge edifice which is employing a substantial number of people, less and less contributing to the health services and more and more just paddling frantically to keep its own head above water. This is exactly the kind of employment situation which trade unionists and others regard with considerable alarm because it is very volatile. Even if there is a bale-out operation carried on this time, something worse could happen at a future date. We may be only postponing the evil day in so far as the sweep is concerned. While I am all in favour of postponing evil days from time to time, they have to be faced up to eventually.

I would like very much to see a very substantial rethink of the whole sweepstake operation carried out by the Government. I sympathise with the Minister in this. He is in a position which is not of his own making and has had some very difficult decisions to take. When he comes to wind up perhaps he would give us some indication of the total amount which is being paid in management and operation fees to the promoters of the sweepstake since its inception. This would be useful information to have which could be set, to some extent anyway, against the money they have contributed to the hospitals fund.

Some people have urged—and indeed I would add my voice to theirs —that there should be substantially more disclosure of the details of the whole sweep operation whether by parliamentary investigation or otherwise. Unfortunately, we are up against the problem here that any substantial degree of disclosure might affect the stock-in-trade of the sweepstake promoting company. That is the information on which it bases its whole operation. Like any private company this company has capital. It has cash capital; it also has a knowhow capital, and informational capital. No doubt there are good commercial reasons why this informational capital should not be made public. It might be alleged that if this were to happen the whole raison d'être of the Sweep might disappear. However, one can equally make an argument that this exposes the whole weakness of the situation; it exposes the whole weakness of a private company running what is supposed to be basically a public enterprise. There is a fundamental conflict here that the Government and perhaps the Minister for Health and the sweepstake committee themselves will eventually have to face up to. At present under our legislation private companies such as this can publish very vestigial accounts. There are new regulations coming into force under the EEC which may improve the situation, but I doubt if they will improve it enough.

I see this Bill fundamentally as a holding operation. I would like to think that it will promote, not just in this House but among the Irish public at large, a whole rethink of an operation that no longer serves the purpose for which it was established to any substantial degree and which is causing, if I may say so, substantial concern in other countries throughout the world and not least in Northern Ireland where they regard this method of financing the health service as repugnant to many of the values they claim.

Mrs. Robinson

I would like to support many of the constructive criticisms put forward by Senator Horgan of this particular method of raising funds for hospitals and for the health service in Ireland. Indeed I found his criticisms very moderately and judiciously phrased, which may to some extent stem from moving from the Independent benches to the Government benches. Yet, as he said, and it is very true, at a time of high unemployment and recession in Ireland, it is difficult to examine objectively any institution which employs nearly a thousand people in the country. At the same time I think we must examine objectively the operation of the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes. We must be aware that down the years there has been criticism, both in this country and outside, of the operation of the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes. Some of this criticism has been ill-informed but there is an underlying element of disquiet and cause for concern. We know that those journalists who have sought further information and who have investigated the operation of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes have not furthered their careers in doing so. Indeed, if anything, they have either changed their immediate employment or left the country entirely.

It is necessary that we realise that the whole terms of reference have changed very dramatically since the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes were founded. First of all, the State involvement in health and welfare has expanded very considerably. Secondly, we are now a mature country, with resources, with a capacity to generate income from the public sector so that we do not need the unique structure of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes which depends on the particular activity of a private company. Thirdly, I would agree with Senator Horgan that it is very questionable whether this form of activity is the right way to go about recycling money in the country for the benefit of hospitals. It is very questionable indeed whether this is the way in which we should go about it. The Sweep has become a national institution, but a national institution which has been severely criticised in other countries where it is at least arguable that it operates illegally, and it has been said by official sources in other countries that it does operate illegally.

The exact function of the brief Bill before us today is one that may only delay an objective and independent examination of the operation of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes. Maybe we will have to wait until another Bill comes before us proposing that not more than 50 per cent of the income generated by the sweepstakes go to the expenses of running it. Then perhaps people will say: "Look, this is not tolerable; this is not possible; we must examine the whole structure and operation of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes." That would be a great pity. It is wrong to emphasise the employment picture at surface level and to say we cannot really examine the position because we may be endangering all or some of close to 1,000 jobs. We must face the fact that the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes has an impact here which demands that, after the length of time that it is in operation, there be a full-scale, independent examination of its operation.

I would ask the Minister specifically for an undertaking that the Government will commission an independent, full-scale examination of the operation of the sweepstakes. This would be good for the general morale of the country. The independence of the inquiry should ensure its objectivity. The promoters of the sweepstakes might well welcome it because there have been some very serious half-formed allegations.

As a public representative, I would very much like to know much more about the administration of and more disclosure of details of accounts of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes in the context of an examination of whether this is the best way to employ 1,000 people and to generate an income which the Minister said in his opening remarks contributed down the years about £82 million to Irish hospitals. That is a recycling of income from the people of this country. Are we doing it in the right way? I certainly do not think so and I do not think one can argue seriously on the face of it that this is the way to go about it. We must not be bought off and diverted by the present economic difficulties. The present economic recession and worry about jobs do not eliminate the importance of examining any body which has such a substantial impact in the State and of commissioning an objective study to examine its operations, its terms of reference, whether the conditions which led to its being set up still prevail on and whether this is the best way to achieve support for our health services.

Mr. Harte

Just in case there be any confusion, may I say that the Labour Party are unreservedly supporting the Bill in so far as increasing the organisation fees, if you like, are concerned? But that does not mean that they have not got views about it. We have taken a realistic look at it on the basis of the employment content, the whole background of the hospitals sweepstakes over the 40 years they have been in existence, the fact that they have given employment to a certain category of worker who would not otherwise have found employment in the State over a very long period. I do not want that last remark to be a reflection on the people who work in the hospitals sweepstakes. I am speaking about a certain category of person who would not otherwise have found employment and it was a very good thing that there was employment of that nature for them.

The Labour Party have followed exactly what was being put before us. We tried to examine it in the light of the present situation having regard to the fact that this is not the end, or that we are not saying that this is the end but that, on this occasion and for the purpose for which the Bill is introduced, we have no reservations about supporting the Bill, lest there be any confusion in that respect.

In many cases anxiety may be caused when one sees administrative expenses reaching 40 per cent in an organisation that might be considered to be of a charitable nature, which of course it is not. There is a belief in a lot of people's minds that because there is a Hospitals Trust Fund there is a heavy amount of charity involved in it. Paying 40 per cent expenses for administrative purposes when one is dealing with some charitable organisation naturally would be resented, not only by me but by many others. It is not a charity. There are many complicated things to be dealt with and there are many problems. What we are really saying is that on this occasion, because of the direct and indirect labour content and because the hospitals are getting a couple of million pounds a year which they cannot get from any other source at this time, we support this measure.

Mrs. Robinson

Would the Senator support an inquiry into the operation of Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes?

Mr. Harte

I will ask the Labour Party if they will support an inquiry. I will bear in mind Senator Robinson's words. But that is not the issue before us today. The issue before us is to let the House know the reasons we are supporting the Bill and the fact that we are doing so unreservedly. We have no reservations about that particular aspect of it That does not mean that we are merely following the leader or rowing in with any situation. It does not mean that we have not had regard to a lot of points of view that exist around the country.

Lastly, I would like to say that, as one of the major political parties, if we feel there is something wrong, rather than throwing out red herrings, generalised statements and so on, or making any accusations that we cannot stand over, through the democratic process it would be our duty to consider whether there are only circumstances we consider would warrant examination in the future, have them raised in that way but not by a broad, sweeping, general statement or by any innuendo. After all none of us, even as politicians, likes to see something in the Press that we cannot hit back at or which leaves a tag on us even though there may be no foundation for it whatever. If we raise it we will do so in the context of having it investigated in a proper way, if we decide after examination by the parliamentary party that that is the situation and that it warrants investigation. Our function at present is to support this measure and we do so unreservedly.

Professor Quinlan

We can accept the present Bill but only as a holding measure. I am very much in agreement with Senators Horgan and Robinson on this and the views they have expressed. Undoubtedly the sweepstakes has contributed a great deal to our hospitals' development, perhaps more so in the thirties and forties than in later years. Today the amount contributed is relatively insignificant compared with the total hospital bill. I know £2 million is £2 million but in the context of the bill, it means that we are more than justified now in having a relook at the whole operation and weighing up carefully all of the factors involved. I do know of the great deal of adverse publicity that the sweepstakes operations have generated in other countries—in the United States and in Canada, for instance. The Minister gave the total of contributions for the 40 years as £82 million. What has this been year by year during the past four to five years? We should be a bit disturbed at seeing the level of expenses rising from 25 per cent up to 35 per cent and, facilitated by the Bill, up to 40 per cent. That suggests that the expenses are increasing but perhaps the amount spent on prizes is too high.

I appreciate the employment content involved but the whole type of operation or part of its energies might be directed into some other sphere. People like a little gamble or to take a little chance but the little chance in the past, and rightly so in the thirties and forties, was aimed at helping a very worthwhile cause—the hospitals. Today perhaps the little chance might have some element of helping the tourist industry, in other words that the prizes might not necessarily be cash. Perhaps some type of package tourism encouragement, certainly from abroad, might fill the same bill. In other words, people involved can be utilised in this way. It is high time that a cold, calm, dispassionate and critical look was taken at the whole operation. I do not think that an independent inquiry is the ideal step to take at this stage. Perhaps an interdepartmental inquiry into it would seem the most appropriate where you would have the balance brought about between the finance side and the contributions to revenue and to the hospitals and employment side. This would give a type of balanced Government view on the happenings.

If we got that report saying that there would be other measures or other inquiries necessary something else could be undertaken at that stage. There would be no reason for regarding the setting up of such an inquiry as any reflection on the present management or staff of the hospitals sweepstakes. We recognise very much the good work they have done and the helping hand they gave to hospitals when that was needed but today the contribution on the hospital front is infinitesimal and above all the fact that this has been spread over voluntary and over public hospitals diminishes it still further because its real beginning was the necessity to help voluntary hospitals. Today the necessity is help for voluntary hospitals. Public hospitals should be operated by way of public funds and not lotteries.

Minister for Justice (Mr. Cooney)

I wish to thank Senators for their acceptance of the need for this Bill and I will endeavour to deal with the points that were raised in the course of the debate. Senator Horgan expressed an abhorrence of the idea of sweepstakes. I do not share his abhorrence for the idea as such nor do I quite understand it because a sweepstake is such a common form of lottery in many forms throughout the entire world and in many forms throughout this country that I do not see anything repugnant or wrong about it. This particular operation has been the victim of what Senator Robinson described as half-formed allegations and indeed there is no doubt that it has been the victim of many unproven statements, allegations, smears and innuendoes. The thinking of many people with regard to its operations has been conditioned by reason of the existence of these absurd half-formed allegations. Senator Robinson, probably unwittingly, was guilty of one here when she remarked on the position of journalists who wrote about this particular operation and who, she said, found that their careers did not benefit and indeed some of them had departed from this country. Again this was precisely the type of thing that she was criticising. That was a smear because the implication was that by virtue of writing about this operation they in some way did harm or damage to themselves or that somebody did them harm. That is precisely the sort of thing which this operation has had to suffer from for a great number of years. We in Parliament have a particular duty not to allow ourselves to be conditioned by anything other than hard and precise facts and not to allow ourselves to make up our minds or to adopt an attitude or a stance that is based on the half truths and innuendoes or, as Senator Robinson says, the half-formed allegations.

Senator Horgan says that a publicly-run organisation would be preferable to the present system whereby the Sweeps are run by a private company on behalf of what is a public committee, the Sweepstakes Committee. Of course, what we are all inclined to overlook and forget is that the private company who run the Sweeps do so because they and they alone have the know-how to run the Sweeps. A public company would not know how to run the Sweeps. This particular know-how in this context is something of considerable commercial value and the people who own that thing of considerable commercial value naturally want to ensure that they profit out of it. Any person who has something of peculiar commercial value is going to use it to profit commercially. It is just not feasible to say that this operation could be run publicly or to assume that a public company or a public body or a committee or some other body would have the know-how to try out this operation. They would not. The know-how is in the possession of the promoting company here and nobody else. That is their commercial property. I have no doubt, having regard to the realities of commercial life, that they are not prepared to give that property away. No company having a valuable commercial asset is prepared to hand it over.

The difficulties which have caused this Bill to come before the House are not the making of the company. They are not due to the fact that the rate of expenses has risen. The rate has risen because those expenses are subject to the inflationary pressures that are everywhere. The principal reason why the Bill is necessary is that the receipts have dropped and have dropped quite significantly in the last two years. The last Sweep in which the receipts were more than £4 million was back in the Derby Sweep of 1973. Since then they have been less than that figure and have been roughly running at £3,500,000 and in the Sweeps Hurdle, 1975, for the first time the receipts dropped below £3 million and when the expenses are expressed as a percentage of receipts and the receipts have dropped then the amount available for expenses is also dropping. If the actual expenses that have to be met do have an inflationary element in them as these expenses here have—wages, advertising, postage and so on—quite obviously the two things combined are going to compound the adverse effect of the drop in receipts. The reason this Bill is necessary is not because expenses have not been kept strictly under control but because the figure on which they are based has been dropping. It is important to realise that.

The promoters are paid by an organisation and management fee, being a percentage of the proceeds. The percentage is a sliding scale—6 per cent on the first £100,000, 5 per cent on the second £100,000 and thereafter 1¾ per cent, I understand that there was some publicity somewhere to the effect that it was 2 per cent. It is 1¾ per cent. This was a reduction which I suggested was proper some time ago when the price of the tickets was increased and this was acceptable to the promoters. The overall percentage is roughly 2 per cent, perhaps slightly under or maybe a fraction over. This is what it works out at.

Senator Horgan asked how much the promoters received by way of organisation and management fees since the inception of the Sweeps. The total amount is £9,419,579. That is up to the Sweeps Hurdle of 1975 and in the 45 years that the Sweep has been in existence that is an annual fee of something in excess of £200,000. That is a large sum, but spread over 45 years on an annual basis I think it falls into reasonable perspective, particularly when we bear in mind that during that time the Exchequer benefited to the extent of nearly £109 million. That was between payment to the hospitals and payment to the Exchequer by way of stamp duty. Prizes amounted to £248 million and there were the expenses—wages, advertising, money spent in this country and which was collected abroad.

I will take up a point here made by Senator Robinson. This is not a recycling of internal funds because the vast majority of the funds dealt with in the sweepstakes comes from abroad and the money that was spent here since the beginning of the sweeps in wages and other expenses incurred in this country amounted to over £80 million. These are all very substantial sums and, having regard to the scale of our economy, are not insignificant. Criticism was made of the comparatively small amount that is now being contributed to the hospitals. In the last two years, the amount going to the hospitals, apart from the Exchequer, was £2,500,000 approximately. In 1974 is was slightly over £2,500,000 and in 1975 slightly under £2,500,000. In addition there was in excess of £500,000 paid by way of stamp duty, so that the total benefit to the country was over £3 million in each of those years.

In terms of the total national budget that is not a large sum but in a time of budgetary constraint, when every penny has been watched carefully and there are many hands out for it and when we are subjected to calls to cut back taxation and at the same time increase public spending—and these calls are in the health area in particular —we cannot disregard the valuable contribution this makes to our health budget. The operation which produces this is well worthwhile.

I hope that the sweeps will continue to be a viable operation but if the proceeds continue the trend displayed over the past number of sweeps, and particularly the trend displayed in the Sweeps Hurdle of 1975, where the receipts fell under £3 million for the first time, then the question of the viability of the operation must necessarily arise. When the Government agreed to ask the Oireachtas to increase the amount available for expenses to 40 per cent it was felt that, because the expenses up to now had crossed the 35 per cent level, a reasonable limit to put on it would be 40 per cent. If they cross 40 per cent we must then look at the viability of the entire operation. If it goes up to 50 per cent then quite clearly the amount remaining for the other purposes of the sweepstakes must bring into question seriously the viability of the whole operation.

On the question of inquiries into the Sweep this ignores what I have said is a central fact: this is an operation by a private company who alone carry out this operation. I have got certain information from this private company in order to judge the scale of their operations and to deal with some of these allegations that Senator Robinson refers to and I am also satisfied that any other information I want I can get and I can force its disclosure to me. I would have no compunction in refusing to sanction any particular scheme for any particular sweep if that information were refused to me.

That is as far as one can go in this particular area. I do not think that a public inquiry would be proper for what is a private company. There is inquiry and public auditing of the proceeds. These figures are published and are distributed to Members of the Oireachtas and are available for anyone who wishes to see them. Therefore, they are not secret figures. A lot of what has been said about the sweeps operation has, as Senator Robinson properly put it, on the basis of half-formed allegations and this in turn has led to a climate of distrust and of smear. In the other House a Deputy indicated that he had been intimidated. That will have to be fully investigated but it would appear from a report in one of today's papers that the intimidation consisted of a female employee of the company saying that she would like the Bill supported because her job was at stake. This is an indication of how emotional people can be in regard to this particular operation and I have no doubt that Members of the Oireachtas will be conscious of their obligation to be practical and realistic and, above all, not to give way to any temptation to repeat the innuendoes that have been made in regard to this company.

As Minister for Justice, I have the power to satisfy myself that its operations are bona fide and that its operations are conducted in accordance with the law of the land. I will use that power in any way I deem necessary. I do not think that this company should be put in any more different position from any other private company in the State that has commercial property of its own. Until such time as the laws in relation to the disclosure of the affairs of private companies generally is changed I do not think we should suggest any particular change with regard to this company. Its operations in so far as the operations of the sweepstakes are concerned are public knowledge. I think Senators will agree with me that, having regard to what I said, the contribution from this operation to the State, to the Exchequer and to the hospitals and by way of employment within the State has been very substantial over the years. It is still of such grave significance as to justify its continuation and to justify this Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.