The National Lottery is to make a decision within the next three months whether to press ahead with the idea of allowing people play the Lotto through their mobile phones.
GTECH Corporation, the company licensed by An Post to provide the National Lottery with the Lotto terminals in newsagents and other outlets, yesterday announced they had acquired the technology to begin mobile-phone gaming. The technology will allow players to bypass the queue at the newsagent's and gamble directly through their mobile phones.
Players will be able to pick and submit their numbers and pay for their tickets using any mobile phone. The system can also send out notification of the winning numbers and can alert any lucky players holding a winning ticket. The new technology will make it "easier and faster" for people to buy tickets, GTECH vice-president, Mr Richard Kopple, said.
The National Lottery has not yet decided who will win the contract to provide mobile gaming. "We started a tender process late last year for multi-channel gaming. We're in the middle of that process now and hope to have all the proposals in by the start of May," a spokeswoman for the National Lottery said.
Multi-channel gaming would involve the use of mobile phones, but it may not necessarily involve the Lotto game itself she said, "but we're not ruling anything in or out at this stage".
The news has prompted concerns that gambling will be made more accessible, particularly to children. "The National Lottery are trying to make compulsive gamblers out of Irish people, and it will be particularly tempting for young people to gamble using their mobiles," Fine Gael social affairs spokesman Mr Michael Ring said.
It was outrageous, he added, that the Lottery would take business away from small rural shops and post offices that rely on the income from the lottery machines.
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