The foot-and-mouth crisis had a disastrous effect on turnover for bookies Paddy Power but the company recovered very quickly once racing resumed, finance director Mr Peter O'Grady Walshe said yesterday. Power Leisure, which trades as Paddy Power Bookmakers, still managed to generate an increase of 60.7 per cent in operating profits for the six months to June 30th.

Mr O'Grady Walshe, who oversaw the group's flotation on the Irish and London stock exchanges, will be replaced by Mr Ross Ivers in September. He will retain the role of executive director.

Turnover from the licensed betting offices was up 11.2 per cent at #170 million. Revenue from tele-betting rose 10.3 per cent to #22 million and the online business generated turnover of #13.9 million. Power Leisure dropped 10 cents on the ISEQ index to #3.70 yesterday. The group declared an operating loss of #5.8 million, of which #3.2 million was part of the marketing spend for the online business.

"The outlook for all our operations remains positive," chief executive Mr Stewart Kenny said.

Mr O'Grady Walshe said the online operation gave the group brand awareness in Britain. "At the end of December we had about 12,000 people signed on to our service and at the end of June we had 27,000, of which 9,000 are from the UK."

The group will also benefit from British tax changes in October. The Irish Government taxes betting at 5 per cent and the UK rate of 6.75 per cent will be abolished from October 6th.

Paddy Power's will route its online business through the UK and plan to set up a call centre for telesales there as well.

He said the group would continue to open more shops in Ireland, however, and it had spare capacity in its new call centre in Tallaght which it would develop.

The government-owned ICC Bank owns 13.9 per cent of Power Leisure which has 124 outlets, mainly in Ireland.