Ms Carol Boate:

I will say to the Deputy that it is probably useful to understand that I spend more time making sure the operator is spending enough money on things. I do not want it reducing the amount of money it spends on aspects of running the national lottery. Sometimes, I am getting it to spend more money to make its systems better.

For example, there was an incident this year where a few lotto advertisements for the jackpot had stayed out in the Internet ether for a little longer than the draw. That is not good enough and it is not appropriate. It is more challenging to advertise reliably on the Internet, particularly when it is for a product that changes every three days, but it is up to the operator to make sure it has systems and controls to deliver that. At that stage, I demanded that the operator provide me with a demonstration of how it was going to improve its controls and have appropriate systems in place. It commissioned an external firm that specialises in auditing media to do an audit of its systems and controls, and those of the third-party supplier it uses to buy media and advertising. The operator gave me a report on that, including the recommendations and the progress on implementing them. That has already yielded some changes in that the operator now has more checks and balances in place to make sure that does not happen, which has slowed down its advertising in terms of how quickly it can get its advertising out. That is good because it is being done in favour of reliability. The operator does not advertise on all platforms but a couple of the major ones have given them an account manager, which I understand is highly unusual for an Ireland-only company, to improve the reliability of advertising online.