Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, Premier Lotteries Ireland Limited, the private operator of the national lottery confirmed that €180,000 in prize money was left out of three scratch card games over the last number of years. Two of these scratch card games, each called "Congratulations" and sold at €5 per card, were missing three of the top prizes, each worth €50,000. The other game was missing a top prize worth €30,000. This is a total of four jackpot prizes missing in three games, games that have resulted in scratch card sales of more than €20 million for that company. It has also emerged that one of these games was left on sale for six weeks after the issue became known to the operator and the company.

I want to be clear that I have nothing against the lottery. I play the lottery in the knowledge that many of the proceeds go into charitable causes and community projects, which is very welcome. I also do it in the knowledge that the lottery is a form of gambling that requires proper regulation and robust legislation to underpin it. I put it to the Tánaiste that it is very hard to believe that three games operated by Premier Lotteries Ireland had four jackpot prizes missing and that this was due to human error or some improbable misfortune. In one of these games, the number of prizes was designed to be no less than 976,500. The probability that out of all those prizes it was the jackpot prize that would be missing is nearly one in one million. The probability that out of all the prizes four jackpot prizes across three games would be missing, involves a lot of zeros. The probability is one in 25 million billion. The numbers simply do not stack up and serious questions need to be answered by Premier Lotteries Ireland, by the Regulator of the National Lottery and by the Government.

The national lottery was privatised in 2014 by Fine Gael and the Labour Party at a price of €400 million. We were told that the licence was sold to pay for the national children's hospital among many other capital projects, some of which we still wait to see. We now know that this price will not even cover a fraction of the cost of the national children's hospital. Since the private operator was given the license, the number of retail outlets where games are sold has escalated beyond any expected proportions. There are now more than 2,000 further retail outlets, which is an increase of 56% since it was privatised. Unclaimed prizes are pumped into advertising and promotion instead of going to charitable causes where they should be going. We can see this in relation to the numbers of shops and games.

Those who buy a scratch card or lottery ticket do not do so in the hope of winning the €3 or €5 prizes. They do it to win the biggest prize. A private operator, however, that deals in odds every day, managed to leave out the four top prizes, against astronomical odds. The legislation around this is completely flawed. This private operator writes its own code of conduct and sends it to the regulator for approval.

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