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THERE’S SOME ROLE reversing going on at the Lotto offices today. This time, it’s the staff themselves celebrating.
It has been 30 years since the National Lottery was set up with an aim of whipping up funds that could be pumped into good causes around the country.
Since then, they’ve set up the Jackpot, Telly Bingo and Winning Streak – all in an effort to keep the public’s interest.
Ireland has quite a high rate of participation in the National Lottery when compared with our neighbours in the UK.
“[The Irish] people took to it straight away,” says National Lottery CEO Dermot Griffin, mentioning Ireland’s two million Lotto players.
He shares some of the stories of how Lottery winners protect their tickets once they’ve learned that they’ve won: some hide them behind picture frames or in Bibles, others place them on the mantelpiece.
Others are a little less orthodox.
One winner moved the wardrobe, lifted up the carpet, put the ticket under the floorboards, put the carpet back down, put the wardrobe back, and kept all the windows closed so it would be secure.
Another put their ticket at the back of the dog’s kennel, not thinking about what the dog might do it, he recalls.
“Ticketholders might call their bank manager either, who would be only too delighted to get up in the middle of the night to put the ticket away safely.”
When Griffin tells people that he works for the National Lottery, he says they usually “hand you the six numbers they expect you to call out at the next draw”.
When the Lotto began
The National Lottery was set up in 1987 to generate funds that would then spread money out across the country through various projects.
It was organised after the controversial Irish Sweepstake was dismantled. The popular game involved pulling tickets out of a drum that corresponded to a racing horse. Races were then held and the ticket holder of the winning horse would take home the cash prize.
(On a side note, in an episode of Breaking Bad, the main character Walter White is told “You’re alive, as far as I’m concerned, that’s the Irish sweepstakes.”)
Scratchcards were the first game that the National Lottery began with; and then in March 1988 the Lotto draw was set up, where you have to match the six randomly selected plastic balls, chosen live on television, with the six numbers on your ticket (there’s also an additional bonus ball).
Soon after, the 50 pence price per line gave a 28-member Dublin syndicate an idea. The group spent six months preparing different combinations, and in the days before a draw they tried buying up all possible combinations to win all prizes on offer.
They did this with an 80% success rate, and forced the Lotto to take measures to protect themselves from exploitation (though, that amount of preparation does deserve some credit).
In total, more than 800 prizes of over €1 million have been paid out over the years.
It costs €4 to buy two lines on the Lotto, and you have an 11 million to one shot of winning the jackpot.
The luckiest shop (and winners) in Ireland
The GPO in Dublin has sold the most amount of winning tickets at 14 – a total giveaway of more than €15 million over the years.
But O’Neill’s newsagents in Co Donegal have had an incredible 12 winners over the years; and Ardkeen Superstores in Co Waterford have had eight tickets worth €19.5 million.
Pearse O’Neill, owner of O’Neill’s Newsagent in Bridgend, said, “We have people coming into the shop from all over the country in the hope that they are our next big winners.
We haven’t had a jackpot win for a while so we’re definitely due another big one very soon to cement our place on top of the list!
In 2005, Dolores McNamara smashed National Lottery records to become the biggest ever jackpot winner – taking home over €115 million in the EuroMillions jackpot.
The Dan Morrissey Syndicate of 15 work colleagues from Co Carlow won the largest Lotto jackpot prize of €18.9 million in 2008.
But there’s often a huge burden that comes with being a Lotto-made millionaire: the requests from the public, the obligation to family and friends, and the new-found and sudden status as a person of means.
Lotto winner David Kevitt from Drogheda told Marian Finucane in 2015 that he’s often wondered (but can’t honestly say) whether his grocer’s shop failed due in part to his £1.35-million Lotto win.
“People would walk by and say ‘That’s yer man who won the Lotto’ and I used to hate that because I didn’t want to be tagged as that person,” he said.
And on occasion you’d have someone questioning the pricing of something that’s in the shop, and in fairness, we were selling stuff really cheap.
“If I had been a self-made millionaire, would that have made a difference?”
He said that word spread like wildfire, so even if he had tried to remain anonymous, he wouldn’t have been able to.
To maybe prove his point, when we tried to contact past winners, the National Lottery said that none of them expressed an interest in speaking, anonymously or otherwise.
The causes behind the draws
Although the Irish Sweepstake seemed to be a charity, it was actually a private company where “its handful of stockholders have used their earnings from the sweepstakes to build a group of industrial enterprises that loom quite large in the modest Irish economy”, according to Forbes Magazine at the time.
The Irish Sweepstake was wound up, but a replacement was needed to continue generating funds.
Around 30 cent of every €1 generated by National Lottery sales goes towards projects in the areas of sport and recreation, health and welfare, national heritage, the arts, and the Irish language.
“That amounts to around €500,000 every day. Last year alone, €210 million was raised for good causes… which help to define Ireland, our communities and our culture,” Griffin said.
Some of those that benefitted from last year’s intake include 895 local sports projects awarded over €45 million; arts projects that got over €78 million in funding; the National Lottery fund contributed over €2 million towards Irish language support schemes; and over €7 million in National Lottery funding was awarded by the HSE and the Department of Health.
One of the only blips in the National Lottery’s history was in 2015, when the lotto draw was cancelled for the first time in its history because of issues with ticketing machines.
In the aftermath, it was accused of making “savings and shavings” to recoup some of its massive outlay to buy the licence, but even then – people jumped to its defence.
Finance Committee chair Liam Twomey said at the time: “The National Lottery is a popular national institution which also makes an important contribution to social projects nationwide.”
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No point in creating jobs if there is a shortage of houses / apartments for employees to live in
@John Judd: What if the employees are Irish and are living here anyway?
@John Judd: No point in creating houses / apartments if there are no jobs for the people that live in them.
@Pat Bateman: that’s rare in these companies.
@John Judd: That’s the spirit John. Bah humbug.
@John Judd: You’re right John, all this job creation is desperate stuff altogether. It wouldn’t have happened in my day….
@John Judd: the Building of new houses has started . But can a normal family afford to buy one !
We must be getting close to full employment where anyone who wants a job can get one…..Don’t think any other European economy even Germany have our economic growth rates…..
@thewolf: What’s the breakdown of that welfare spending? Or are you simply moaning for the sake of it?
@Blants: so employees with lots of experience are unattractive to organisations? Wrong.
@John003: maybe so but not all these jobs are full 40 hr week numbers. An awful lot of 20-30 hr crap out there.
@thewolf: Feel free to get to your point then?
Meanwhile the rest of the country suffers on…plenty of land for accommodation here lads!!!
And by rest of the country I mean rural towns and villages. Not Cork, Limerick, Galway, etc.
@Grand: you are right – it’d be great if these companies would set up outside Dublin.
IDA don’t give grants to foreign companies setting up in Dublin any more. And still the companies want to set up in Dublin.
@Grand: And why would a company like Autodesk even contemplate setting up in a rural town or village?
These companies need to be close to population centres to attract workers.
@David Murphey: They should pick places like Athenry Co Galway.
@Larry Leary: “supported by” means the IDA will take the credit for attracting the company to Ireland. :-) IDA have been working on this one for several years.
But they won’t get any grants from IDA.
MSD have a facility in Swords that they are reopening, why would they head for the bog?
In any event, where would you find 350 workers in rural Ireland?
Finally:
“We selected Dublin because of its global business environment, talent, ability to support European languages, excellent long-term cost structure, and quality of life for employees,”
BOOM!!!
@Gary Foster: well if you’re commuting 45 mins to cross the city you might as well commute the same length of time outside the city. That’s why the government should be pushing big companies like this out the city even if it costs big money in the short term.
@Gary Foster: Balliragget
Where are all the employees going to live? Tents? Or 10 per house?
@Tom Sawyer: Are you assuming all the vacancies will be filled by people that dont already live in the region?
@Tom Sawyer: the new communes they are building for the millennial foreigners
@Tom Sawyer: they want us living in shared accommodation like students.
In 2013 570 people lost their jobs there, will they be rehired I wonder!
@Colette Kearns: I doubt 5 years later people are still out of work, waiting for the office to reopen.
@Colette Kearns: depends on how many are going to apply I suppose.
@Colette Kearns: You’re a great woman for the oul wondering Colette!
Just waiting for the unfortunate matching job losses news that the gov like to match this type of story up with!
@Adrian: you’ll be waiting so.
Shinners wishing job losses on the country, so they can be ‘right’. Sad.
@Tony Dowling: no, not wishing on any job losses, just highlighting the sneaky way the gov operate. Wouldn’t be surprised if there were job losses announced on friday, which would be drowned out in the news by another one of the govs big launches on the future of Ireland.
Be nice to have 550 jobs in the county that will be most impacted by Brexit but we don’t have many motorways, integrated public transport or railroads to entice them with (anyone spot a theme with my posts yet!). Heather Humphries TD when questioned in the Dail about such enterprising suggestions as encouraging the IDA to view more prospective sites in Donegal (2 in the last year!) was “we’ll being from Cavan I’m quite jealous of the business already in Donegal”…all which have been here ten years or more still leaving us with high employment rates (nit the companies faults..). That’s the calibre of ministers we have…
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