Unlucky for some: bingo-calling PAC chair slams new laws
THE chairman of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), who is a bingo caller in his local community centre, has called on the Government to reconsider new gambling laws that have angered bingo players.
Minister of State David Stanton has shot down the demands of bingo players and insisted he will not change his controversial gambling legislation. The Government is proposing that a maximum of 25pc of proceeds go to bingo operators while a minimum of 25pc would go to charity and 50pc would go to prizewinners.
But PAC chair Seán Fleming, a Fianna Fáil TD who calls bingo in his local community centre in Castletown, Co Laois, on the second Sunday of every month, said the proposals would damage voluntary bingo nights such as the one he is involved in. “If we were restricted to prizes of 50pc, you have to tell people what the prizes are before they come in. If all you can pay out is dependent on what you take in, why would you bother going? These are volunteers.”
He said a certain level of prize money should be exempt from the new rules.
“We have to separate commercial from the purely voluntary, all the ones I know in the midlands are voluntary.”
Fianna Fáil’s justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan said he would raise the issue in the Dáil this evening.
Mr Stanton said he did not accept bingo halls would close as a result of the changes to the Gaming and Lotteries Act.
He said the law would ensure charities get a “fair share” of the proceeds. About 100 protesters played a game of bingo outside Leinster House in protest against the laws.