Almost 30 percent of sales go to fund designated good causes in the areas of sport and recreation, national culture, the arts, community health, and the natural environment.

To raise funds during Ireland's post-2008 economic downturn, the Irish government sold the National Lottery licence for 20 years to a private operator, Premier Lotteries Ireland DAC (PLI), which was initially majority-owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, with a minority stake held by An Post and An Post Pension Funds.

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform appoints an independent regulator (currently Carol Boate) to oversee the National Lottery's operations.

In its 1984 economic plan, Building on Reality 1985–1987, the coalition government of Fine Gael and the Labour Party proposed to raise funds for sports through creating a new National Lottery.

[10] An Post National Lottery Company successfully retained the licence in 2001 as the only bidder in the public tender process, after two other applications were withdrawn.

[17][18] On 3 October 2013, the government announced the winning bid of €405 million from Premier Lotteries Ireland DAC (PLI), majority-owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (then-owner of the Camelot Group, which operated the UK National Lottery from 1994 to 2024), with a minority stake held by An Post and An Post Pension Funds.

[27] Following the acquisition, the National Lottery announced plans to move its headquarters away from Dublin's Abbey Street, where it had been based since its inception.

He was succeeded by Cian Murphy, formerly PLI's chief product and digital officer, who had previously held roles with The AA, Paddy Power, and McKinsey & Company.

[35] He was succeeded by Carol Boate, a former director of corporate services in the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, whose appointment took effect on 9 October 2017.

[36][37] In 2015, representatives of PLI appeared before the Oireachtas Finance Committee to explain technological faults affecting the running of the National Lottery.

[41] In 2022, the Public Accounts Committee questioned PLI CEO Andrew Algeo regarding the company's use of unclaimed winnings between 2015 and 2021, an amount totaling over €124 million.

Algeo defended the marketing expenditure as necessary promotion for the lottery and stated that PLI had remained compliant with the licence terms.

Some members called Boate a "bystander" on the issue while Fine Gael TD Jennifer Carroll MacNeill criticised her for not seeking external legal advice.

[43] Also in 2022, the regulator fined PLI €150,000 for breach of licence after it failed to bar some problem gamblers from online platforms, even though those users had elected to avail of a permanent self-exclusion option introduced in 2019.

[45] The National Lottery began gaming operations on 23 March 1987 when it launched its first scratchcards, selling an estimated 1 million on the first day of trading.

The inaugural Lotto draw was held on Saturday, 16 April 1988, for a jackpot of £147,059, which was won by Brigid McGrath from Letterkenny, County Donegal.

Ticket sales close at 7:45 p.m. on those days, and draws are held at 7:55 p.m.[50] Lotto initially operated as a 6/36 lottery game, in which the odds of matching all six numbers and winning the jackpot are 1 in 1,947,792.

Polish-Irish accountant Stefan Klincewicz had been part of a ten-person syndicate from the Dublin pub Scruffy Murphy’s that, in 1990, won a £2.4 million Lotto jackpot, then the biggest lottery win in Europe.

[51][53] To prevent such a brute force attack from recurring, the National Lottery changed Lotto to a 6/39 game for drawings beginning on 22 August 1992, raising the jackpot odds to 1 in 3,262,623.

[54][53] To compensate for the longer odds, the National Lottery doubled the starting jackpot, added a bonus number to the drawings, and awarded new prizes for Match-5+bonus, Match-4+bonus, and Match-3+bonus.

In November 2006, after several years of declining sales, the National Lottery changed Lotto to a 6/45 game to produce more rollovers and bigger jackpots.

[65][66] In response, a PLI spokesperson called the extended sequence of rollovers "unprecedented", noting that since Lotto had become a 6/47 game in September 2015, 80 percent of jackpots had been won within seven weeks.

[67] National Lottery regulator Carol Boate and PLI representatives were called to testify before the government's Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform on 14 December 2021.

[68] Boate stated that no irregularities had been observed in Lotto draws, noting that other countries' lotteries had experienced similar extended sequences of rollovers.

[69] PLI chief executive Andrew Algeo stated that the operator was seeking regulatory approval for a "must-win" draw if a capped jackpot had not been won for an extended period of time.

[70] In January 2022, the regulator gave approval for a Will-Be-Won draw, under which, if no ticket matched all six winning numbers, the outstanding jackpot would flow down to the winner(s) of the next prize tier.

[82] On 19 February 2019, a family syndicate from North Dublin won a €175 million jackpot, which holds the record for Ireland's largest ever lottery win.

The draw, which featured two top prizes of €1 million, was held on 26 August 2008 to coincide with the final evening of the Rose of Tralee festival.

The National Lottery's flagship game show Winning Streak featured on RTÉ One on Saturday nights between 1990 and 2020, but production was suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and no date has been given for the programme's resumption.

In the 1990s, RTÉ produced a sitcom called Upwardly Mobile about a working-class family who won the Lotto and moved to an upper-middle-class area.