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.

The Tánaiste to respond please.

This private operator can recommend to the regulator how much they can be fined for a breach under the legislation.

The Tánaiste to respond.

The legislation needs to be changed. I ask the Tánaiste to support my call for the regulator to appoint an investigator-----

Deputy, please.

-----which he has the power to do under the legislation, to investigate this matter thoroughly so we can have confidence in our system.

Members will need to keep control of their time.

I thank the Deputy for raising this serious issue. Deputy Doherty is not the only Member to raise it. Deputy Michael McGrath has also raised the matter.

For the record I will outline how this works. The operator of the national lottery, Premier Lotteries Ireland, PLI, has found that four top prizes were not included for players to win in three of the 178 scratch card games it has offered since taking over the licence in 2014. The four prizes together are worth €180,000 and represent some 1.36% of total prize funds of those three scratch card games. These omissions were discovered through an internal review of all national lottery products over the last six weeks, and we are told they were cause by human error. Lotto, Euro Millions, Daily Millions, digital games and all other national lottery products were unaffected by these errors. The Regulator of the National Lottery was promptly notified of the review and has been updated regularly since.

There are real questions to answer here and the Deputy has pointed to some of them. At a minimum, the regulator and the operator should come before an Oireachtas committee to explain what has happened. I am certainly not against the idea of an independent investigation with regard to how this could have happened. The integrity of the lottery system is hugely important given how valuable it is to the many good causes it funds.

The Government has an open mind around getting to the bottom of what actually happened in this case. I do not believe it is acceptable to simply dismiss this as human error at some point in the management chain. We are certainly open to what the Deputy has called for. The Government, however, needs to have a fuller understanding of the appropriate course of action to get to the detail of what went wrong to ensure the public can have full confidence in the lottery system that so many people play on a daily and weekly basis.

There absolutely must be serious questions asked and answers given. We have written to the Oireachtas committee. It is not a case of whether the representatives should appear. The operator and the regulator must attend before the committee. They have a legal responsibility and a legal obligation to appear when they are requested to do so.

This situation seriously dents confidence in the lottery. For every approval sought from the regulator for a scratch card game, the national lottery produces the odds at which a person can win a €3, €5, €20 or a top prize. This is what their game is; it is about the odds. We are asked to believe that human error resulted in something that has odds of happening of one in 25 million billion. It is unbelievable for us to be able to accept that. Moreover, when this was found out the operator continued to sell these tickets.

The private company that operates the national lottery has made enormous profits off the back of these three games, sales of which were in excess of €20 million. Yet, there is no talk from the operator of actually refunding any of those profits back to consumers or to good causes.

There is also a serious issue with regard to the regulator. The Regulator of the National Lottery has a team of ten people. Yes, the regulation is flawed and I ask the Tánaiste to look at that, but the regulator only has one responsibility-----

The Tánaiste to respond please.

-----which is to regulate one company. When she appeared before an Oireachtas committee in 2018 the regulator told us that the Regulator of the National Lottery has access to all the systems and all of the real-time data. Still, the regulator did not uncover this issue. There is a serious question around the role of the regulator when punters have been scammed to a level such as this.

It is important, from a public confidence perspective, that people realise why this is so significant. Since 2015 lottery sales have generated €855 million worth of funding for good causes.

We know that.

Many people do not, which is why it is important to outline it.

Obviously the Tánaiste does not.

This funding has provided critical investment in so many areas in communities such as sports, culture, health, youth services and community development. This is why the integrity of this system needs to be protected. The Government is looking at how best to do that. This is why we have an open mind to what the Deputy has suggested today.

Revoke its licence and take it back into public ownership.

We want to get the regulator and the operator before a committee to answer direct questions. If necessary, we will then ensure an independent investigation to get to the bottom of this in a credible and transparent way. That needs to be done and the Government will ensure it will be.