Politician frets over Lottery’s €19m jackpot rollover . . . the 47th

The Regulator of the National Lottery could be asked to appear before the Oireachtas finance committee on a rollover for the 47th time of the €19 million jackpot, according to the Taoiseach.

Micheál Martin was responding in the Dáil to Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan who expressed concern that the lottery jackpot has not been won for almost six months.

Mr Durkan asked the Taoiseach if the Budgetary oversight committee could examine the rollover for the 47th time of the jackpot, the highest in the history of the draw.

The Taoiseach noted Mr Durkan’s “persistent tenacity” on the need for someone to win the jackpot.

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He quipped when Mr Durkan raised the issue with him that “we all have high estimations of ourselves” but he did not believe it was within “my capacity to produce a winner in the lottery”.

Mr Durkan said “the last win in the twice a week lottery was in early June. The Kildare North TD said such a precedent was set “in 1913 in Monte Carlo and later in Las Vegas”.

He said important work was done by the National Lottery and the public confidence was needed to support the lottery.

In a statement later the Government backbencher said players who have been “buying their Lotto tickets twice a week since June are rightly fed up. We haven’t seen a winner of the top prize in almost six months. How long more will people continue to buy tickets if they don’t believe they have a fair chance of winning?”

He added that “the pandemic significantly boosted ticket sales last year; increasing from €884.5 million in 2019 to €918.9 million in 2020. Online sales grew by 68.28 per cent, representing a total of 14.8 per cent of total sales.

“Sales are up, yet the winners are down. The lotto is like Manchester United, cash being splashed about every week, but a long barren spell sustains with nothing to show for it.

“I have written to the Minister for Public Expenditure, Michael McGrath, whose department oversees the National Lotto, to express my concern. I am aware he has commissioned a report into the transparency of the distribution of lotto funding, but we need to go further and investigate the operation of the game itself now.

“I am asking the regulator, out of respect to the public, to appear before the Oireachtas committee and explain this situation.”

‘Boosted prize funds’

The National Lottery said the game was not designed for the jackpot to go unclaimed for “this long”. But it said that 180 winners nationwide have shared €13.5 million in “boosted prize funds” due to the jackpot prize rolldown.

“The current jackpot rollover of 23 weeks and capped jackpot of €19 million is unprecedented,” said a National Lottery spokesman on Tuesday.

“Because of the cap, the flow down of prizes gives more players the opportunity to win even bigger prizes at lower prize tiers. For example, in last Saturday’s draw, one winner in Fermoy in Co Cork won the Match 5 + Bonus category to win a boosted prize fund worth €996,216.”

The National Lottery said the Lotto is a game of chance, which has no memory of when it was last won.