The chairman of An Post National Lottery, Mr John Hynes, said he anticipated a competitive process for the award of the licence to run the lottery when An Post's existing licence expires in March next year.
Mr Hynes said he would "relish" such a process given the track record of the current licence holder.
An Post's first licence was due to expire in 1996 but was extended to 2000 without a tender process after the company asked for the extension to allow it to concentrate on meeting the challenge posed by the British lottery. "At the time it was extended we were facing a pretty awesome threat from the UK," Mr Hynes said. To meet that challenge, the National Lottery needed to launch a sustained campaign to keep Irish lotto money in Ireland, he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Hynes said the 1993 decision to renew G-Tech's contract for the supply of Lotto machines followed a tender process carried out by the National Lottery and Deloitte & Touche.
There were just two bidders for the contract - G-Tech and an Australian consortium called GC Systems - and both were evaluated according to 25 criteria. Mr Hynes said the tender process was "impeccable" and would stand up to scrutiny. The contract was ultimately awarded to G-Tech on the basis of price and service.
The award of the An Post licence and G-Tech's contract have come under scrutiny after it emerged at the Moriarty tribunal that G-Tech's founder, Mr Guy Snowden, had invested $100,000 (€905,715) in Celtic Helicopters, the company run by Mr Ciaran Haughey, a month before G-Tech's contract was renewed.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)