A final question, Deputy Pat McCartan. I have dwelt overlong on this question, I think the House will agree.

I welcome the Minister's final remarks. I would ask him to consider two aspects. He told us there have been 307 detections in 1988. There has been one prosecution to date in 1989 in the Dublin area and that was yesterday.Could the Minister seek, through the clerks of the courts, to give priority to bringing forward prosecutions that are in the pipeline so that the courts can deal quickly with these matters. Secondly, could he convey to the Garda the view of this House that their powers under the 1956 Act to seize, in the first instance, offending machines should be more widely utilised?

In reply to the first part of Deputy McCartan's question, I will examine that area and also the question of giving priority to one prosecution over another. That would have to be examined in order to deal with the matter as it should be dealt with because it was put forward in a positive and helpful way. With regard to the second part of the question, I saw this matter being highlighted on a recent television programme in which I was unable to participate despite a very gracious invitation from the kind lady who chaired that programme.I would love to have been there.

I was not invited.

She said on the programme that I was invited but she did not say why I could not attend. I thought the whole idea of the empty chair in RTE was no longer in operation. I remember a time, a Cheann Comhairle, when if you and I were invited to a particular programme there was an empty chair, a chair for the Ceann Comhairle and a chair for the Minister but I thought that had gone by the way.

The Minister does not appear too often on "Today Tonight".

If I did the Deputy would be grousing. In regard to the second part of the Deputy's question, part of the problem with seizing these machines, as I have said, is that they are basically amusement machines and not gambling machines. I am sure the Deputy knows how they operate. You buy so many credits and when you finish operating the machine you make your request for payment.It is not the machine that is illegal; it is what happens after you have played the machine that makes it gambling rather than amusement. As I have said, it is a very difficult matter but we are using all our resources to try to come to grips with it.

Those machines were not around in 1956 and that is why we need to amend the Act.

No. 15. Deputy Donal Carey has been waiting anxiously for his questions to be answered. I am calling No. 15 now.