Sir, – I read with some dismay and trepidation for future sales that the National Lottery is to be sold off, almost certainly to some outside investor (Home News, April 4th).
This proposal does not seem to have aroused any comment and is apparently generally acceptable. To me it is anything but.
I will start with some figures calculated from the Lottery’s own income statements and the recent census.
From these figures it is apparent €165.00 per annum is subscribed to the Lottery by every man, woman and child in the country. In effect an average family of five persons subscribes over €800.00 per annum to the Lottery. Given that a large number of citizens do not contribute to the lottery, and I freely admit that I am among the non-subscribers (and I have heard that the non subscriber figure is more than 20 per cent), the actual figure for subscribing families is much higher.
Up to now this money, which may be described as a voluntary tax, at least stayed in the country, but from the date of sale a large amount will almost certainly be taken out of the country. Given a selling price of €400 million it must be assumed that the buyer will expect to take in the order of €50 million for him/herself per annum.
The carrot waved in front of us to show that this is a good thing is that the money is to be ringfenced to go towards paying for the National Children’s Hospital. It is possible that this will happen but any look at the lottery shows that up to €250 million a year could be made available towards the hospital if the so-called “Good Causes” were done without or curtailed for a few years. If the hospital is going to cost €600 million, as little as three years could be more that enough and this country would still own its lottery.
The phrase “good causes” needs to be considered. In my opinion the best causes for politicians are those causes which get them re-elected and any study of the expenditure of Lottery money over its 26 years of business shows that this is what a large part of lottery funds has been used for by governing parties.
It is an unfortunate fact that international financial vultures, sorry investors, follow the IMF wherever it goes to look for rich and easy pickings from distressed countries. It seems these vultures have been offered their first tasty piece of the Irish Corpse to pick over. With more apparently to follow. – Yours, etc,