Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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I welcome our guests and thank them for appearing before the committee. It is very important that they come in because being honest, there is probably a lack of information as regards how the licence works and how the regulator operates. We are currently going through the process of bringing in a gambling regulator. I will be asking the Department some questions about that as well. Obviously, there is a complete overlap here.

My first question is to Ms Boate. As was stated earlier, between 2015 and 2021, in accordance with the licence, €124 million of expired unclaimed prizes has been forfeited in favour of the operator. I read the licence agreement, which states that:

Any expired Unclaimed Prizes shall be forfeited in favour of the Licensee, provided that such Expired Unclaimed Prizes shall be used: solely for the promotion of the National Lottery and/or the Lottery Games ... in a manner determined by the Licensee, which shall include the funding of special draws and additional or top-up prizes; and which may include Incremental Marketing and advertising of the National Lottery.

"Shall" and "may" are two very important words in this licence. If Ms Boate thinks they need to be changed, she might say so in her response. Of the €154 million that is unclaimed, however, it would be very surprising for the public at large to find out the following. A sum of €122 million of this forfeited prize money has been used in accordance with the licence. The "shall" versus "may" differential is quite staggering, however. A figure of 98% of this has been used on the "may" bit, which is incremental marketing, and just 2% has been used on the "shall" bit, which is top-up prizes or prizes. Obviously, for anybody watching this debate and for us, that is not acceptable. It may be that Ms Boate feels the licence and the way in which it is worded is the issue. Is there another issue? To any taxpayer watching, however, that is not acceptable. Why is this allowed to happen? If the legislation or licence is the problem, Ms Boate should please say that and we will take that away and try to deal with it as legislators.