Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 November 2022

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statements 2021: National Lottery Fund

9:30 am

Ms Carol Boate:

We do have oversight. In the two reports it sent us, the one on the base marketing budget for the year and the incremental marketing and promotion budget for the year of how it is apportioning its spend among different channels, it is not down, perhaps, to the level of operators such as RTÉ versus Virgin Media. As the Deputy said, it is "in a manner determined by the licensee", so I have no role at all in ensuring any particular apportionment. However, I do have a role in ensuring location, targeting and content. For example, outdoor advertising, which we have not mentioned much, cannot be within 100 m of a school. When it advertises online, we have age-gated that so that it can only target those over 21 years because, in a social media context, I do not think the age-gates are very reliable, so we increased the age from 18 to 21 years to take a more cautious approach. I do not have oversight of how much, but I am aware it is a significant advertising budget. I do not have information on how it compares with the broader Irish landscape.