National Lottery may face Rehab challenge

AN insurance scheme to challenge the monopoly of the National Lottery is "the best part of a year away" even if it meets no legal problems, the charity behind the concept said yesterday.

Rehab confirmed it was considering insuring customers against their six nominated numbers being drawn in the National Lottery's bi-weekly draw, but added that legal opinion on the proposal had not yet been received.

"We were presented with the idea four weeks ago and we're looking at it," said Rehab's managing director, Mr John McGuire. "But it wasn't discussed at our monthly board meeting last week and nothing has been decided. Once every quarter or so an interesting idea comes up for us to consider and this is just one of those."

He confirmed that the "core idea" envisaged Rehab making jackpot-sized payouts to customers whose insured numbers were drawn, but said there was no basis to reports that lines of numbers could be sold for as little as 9p each.

The possible infringement of the National Lottery's monopoly was "not an issue", Mr McGuire added. "We would be promoting it as an insurance product, not a lottery product. Any legal issues would arise from the legislation on insurance."

Rehab has persistently criticised the National Lottery's monopoly, and particularly the £10,000 cap on weekly payouts by competing charities. "The Taoiseach is on record as acknowledging that the system is unfair," Mr McGuire said. "Everybody agrees it's unfair and unjust, but nobody wants to do anything about it."

The National Lottery said the proposed scheme was a matter between Rehab and the insurance profession. A spokeswoman said: "We operate under the National Lotteries Act, 1986, and the other major piece of legislation governing lotteries is the Gaming and Lotteries Act, 1956. As far as we can tell, this proposal comes under neither."

A spokeswoman for the Irish Insurance Federation said the scheme was possible in theory but it would await a concrete proposal from Rehab: "You can insure against any kind of risk, even against a visitation from aliens. There's no reason you couldn't insure yourself against your lottery numbers being drawn."