Uefa has confirmed that it received over 275,000 applications for the three games involving the Republic of Ireland at the Euro 2016 finals.

With a combined total of just 26,000 tickets available to Irish supporters for the matches against Sweden (13,000), Belgium (6,000) and Italy (7,000), thousands of Irish fans are set to miss out next summer.

With demand hugely outstripping supply - the Irish games have been oversubscribed by a factor of roughly 10 to 1 - the FAI has repeated its intention to “endeavour to reward the most loyal supporters” and various other members of the “football family” when it begins the process of how to allocate tickets.

The FAI’s system has attracted some criticism from those who feel that it allocates too few tickets to supporters with an established track record of going to see the team, especially away from home, and there is likely to be renewed controversy when the distribution is completed next month.

Uefa, which has warned those who have applied for tickets to ensure that they have sufficient funds on the card they have used to complete the process during the weeks ahead, say they will have informed all successful applicants by Monday, February 29th.