Vol. 557 No. 2
179 Mr. Naughten asked the Minister for Finance if, in view of a decision by An Post not to renew some lottery agent contracts, his attention has been drawn to the fact that this will reduce the availability of lotto tickets in many parts of the country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21781/02]
I am not aware of any decision by An Post not to renew some lottery agent contracts, as stated in the Deputy's question. The Deputy may be referring to a recently publicised decision by the An Post National Lottery Company to downgrade some 60 lotto terminals countrywide as part of an overall restructuring of the lotto terminal network.
In January of this year the company carried out a review of its terminal network. At that time there were approximately 2,000 lotto terminals and 1,500 "instant only" or "scratch card" terminals installed. In conducting this review they looked at the sales levels of each of their existing terminals and they also took into account the changing retail environment since these terminals were first installed. As a result of this, the company decided to do a root and branch job of replacing the entire terminal base of 3,500 between now and Christmas in order to reflect the findings of the review. In doing this it decided to use the opportunity to improve the service levels to the player base by changing the machine type provided in certain outlets.
