The Government will "take on board" a recommendation by the Lottery Review Group that the Government and not an independent body should decide on the allocation of lottery funds, the Minister of State for Finance, Mr Martin Cullen, told the Dail.
There has been considerable public concern about political influence in the distribution of funds. However, the review group decided that having an independent body making the decisions "could lead to considerable incoherence in both policy-making and implementation in the community and voluntary sector", because the State already had an infrastructure in place, the Minister said.
All speakers in the debate welcomed the recommendation and Mr Michael Noonan (FG, Limerick East) said "the advantage of money being dispensed by Ministers is that they are fully accountable".
"We have been bedevilled in politics by suggestions that elected representatives are not to be trusted and that some kind of an independent body will do the job absolutely fairly," Mr Noonan said.
"An independent group would refuse £5,000 to one GAA club and give £6,000 to another, and they'll have done this by looking into their hearts in an independent fashion subject to no representations by dirty deputies, who might think that one crowd are a better deal than the other and catering for a larger population and then we'll get the sterile and purified result and it will be above suspicion."
The review group also called for all lottery funding to go to the voluntary and community sectors. Mr Cullen said he welcomed the greater emphasis on voluntary and community groups.
No final decisions had been made about the recommendations but the review group's report would form the basis of the way forward, the Minister added.
He rejected suggestions that the lottery jackpot should be capped because he said it was the jackpot which drove the funding and it was part of the "fun" of the lottery.
Mr Brian Hayes (FG, Dublin South West) said one of the review group's main recommendations was that Government should reverse its policy to use lottery funding for the Exchequer. All the money that comes from the national lottery should go directly to the people it was intended for and not to the Exchequer, he said.
A number of speakers commented on disappointed public expectations about the creation of a national stadium or swimming pool. Mr Cullen said there was £43 million in reserve funds in 1996 which was available for a major project and the funding of a 50-metre swimming pool was under serious consideration. It would cost about £30 million to build and over £500,000 a year to run.
The review group had three independent members: Mr Niall Greene, chairman; Mr Richard Burrows of Irish Distillers; and Dr Kathleen Lynch of UCD. The other members were civil servants.
Mr Cullen said the Department of Finance had put in place procedures for Government Departments to follow in approving funding for projects so that "all applications are treated on an equal footing".
He also announced that £5 million would be set aside for charities which operate lotteries that compete directly with the National Lottery.
Mr Sean Haughey (FF, Dublin North Central) said the National Lottery beneficiary fund could no longer be called a "slush fund" because "we have now cleaned up our act in relation to the distribution of National Lottery funds. Strict application procedures and criteria for evaluating competing applications are now in place."
Ms Beverly Cooper-Flynn (FF, Mayo) suggested that some of the more successful lottery schemes should be put on display and a merit award inaugurated.
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