The Chief Executive of the company that runs the National Lottery has refused to rule out a price hike for customers.

They were before the Oireachtas Finance Committee this afternoon along with groups representing retailers to discuss issues with the recent changeover.

Technical glitches with new machines meant that a Lotto draw was postponed for the first time in its history last month.

Now retailers are concerned that Premier Lotteries Ireland are planning a price hike and extra game numbers for Lotto players without sorting the problems out first.

However, Chief Executive of PLI, Dermot Griffin, would not be drawn on the issue despite questioning from Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald.

Retailers and bosses from the new company running the National Lottery are before the Oireachtas Finance Committee over issues with the changeover.

Premier Lotteries Ireland took over the running of the National Lottery last year, and began rolling out new terminals and products to shops.

However, a Lotto draw was postponed for the first time in its history last month because of technical problems.

The draw was run the following day - but since then there have been a number of glitches.

Members of the committee are meeting with representatives from Premier Lotteries Ireland, and the National Lottery Regulator to consider the operations and functioning of the National Lottery.

The Committee hopes to establish the underlying reasons for the recent outages in the system and the steps being taken to resolve them.

Tara Buckley is the director general of the Retail Grocery Dairy & Allied Trades Association (RGDATA).

She has highlighted the issues her members have been having.