Cian Murphy

We are.

Thanks for having me in, Clare.

Yeah, so the National Lottery has been around for 40 years.

It's done a lot of good.

Our players have raised over 7 billion for good causes.

But it is being undermined at the moment by the phenomenon of lottery betting.

And that's where bookmakers offer to take bets on National Lottery draws.

And this undermines the lottery in a number of ways.

But it diverts money from good causes, which is one of the primary purposes of the National Lottery.

It diverts money from retailers and it makes the National Lottery, which belongs to the Irish people, less valuable.

Yeah, so just on a technical point, more likely to win, but I think you might win some more.

Yeah, so no one is, so we're not suggesting that bookmakers shouldn't be allowed to offer bets on a range of products.

We're not even suggesting that bookmakers shouldn't be allowed, if they wanted to, to pull numbers out of a drum and offer people whatever odds they want to offer on those products.

That's your draw.

Specifically on the National Lottery.

And I think if we really think about that, the only reason why bookmakers want to offer bets specifically on the National Lottery, as opposed to having their own product, is to piggyback off the brand, the reputation, the operations, and fundamentally the trust that has been built up for 40 years in the National Lottery.

So the structure of the National Lottery, it is structurally designed to return money to good causes.

And that's very important for the National Lottery and it's very important for our players.

And so every time somebody buys a National Lottery ticket, roughly 30 cent from that ticket will go back into good causes.

Absolutely.