All but 2% of unclaimed National Lottery prize money goes into marketing, watchdog finds

Just €354,000 of almost €18 million in unclaimed winnings on the National Lottery every year goes back into more prizes, the State’s spending watchdog has disclosed.

An investigation by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) Seamus McCarthy into the lottery operator accounts shows that winning lottery players failed to claim more than €124 million between 2015 and 2021.

Under its contract, operator Premier Lotteries Ireland DAC must use unclaimed prize money for the promotion of the lottery, which raised €290 million for the public purse last year.

Appearing before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee, Mr McCarthy said the contract specifies uncollected winnings must be used by the operator within a year for additional prizes and “some for marketing”.

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Over the past six years, 98 per cent of the unclaimed prize money was spent on “additional marketing” compared with just 2 per cent on “additional prizes”, Mr McCarthy told the hearing.

The C&AG report recommends additional information be added to annual National Lottery accounts so people “see more clearly” where the money is being spent, he added.

Ticket sales for the National Lottery have soared by 51 per cent between 2015 and 2021, Mr McCarthy told the committee, rising from €670 million to €1.1 billion.

Over the same period the proportion of sales allocated to prizes increased from 55.6 per cent to 57.6 per cent.

Appearing before the committee for the first time, regulator of the National Lottery Carol Boate – appointed in October 2017 – said the contribution to good causes has increased with sales from €188 million in 2015 to €304 million last year.

Labour TD Alan Kelly said the fact that only 2 per cent of unclaimed winnings goes back into more prizes “would be very, very surprising to the public at large”.

“From anybody looking in on this, that is not acceptable… to any taxpayer looking in that is not acceptable,” he said.

Mr Kelly said “obviously the licence needs to be changed” as it was “unfair”.

Ms Boate responded that the “the wording” of the contract “doesn’t prescribe any particular proportion” of how the unclaimed money is spent “so there is no role for me in determining the proportion they allocate between those two amounts”.

It had “crossed my mind whether it was compliant with the licence” and “I checked whether or not it required me to ensure a particular proportion, but it doesn’t,” she added.

Ms Boate said ultimately the entire design of the licence to operate the National Lottery is a matter for the Oireachtas and any changes to the contract to insist on more unclaimed money going back into prizes “would amount to a renegotiation of the licence.”