Brendan Howlin, left, and the lottery boss Dermot Griffin at the launch of the licence in 2014 for which PLI paid €405 million

The state has potentially lost out on hundreds of millions of euros because of the terms it agreed for the 20-year licence to run the National Lottery.

The €405 million spent by Premier Lotteries Ireland in 2014 on its licence to run the lottery may, in effect, cost the consortium less than €40 million as a result of Lotto players failing to claim an average of almost €18 million in prizes each year.

The Times has established that Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI) has been able to offset the cost of the lucrative licence by €71.2 million between 2015 and 2018 by one of its terms allowing the company to retain unclaimed prize funds for marketing games.

If the trend persists over the remaining 16 years