Tonight's Ireland Lotto jackpot may be €10 million but National Lottery machines around the country aren't keen on it being won — they've been out of commission since this morning.
The Ireland National Lottery has now confirmed that tonight's draw has been cancelled.
In a statement, it said:
"The National Lottery can confirm that there were technical problems this morning following a service outage related to the 3G telecommunications infrastructure provided by Telefónica. This incident affected business customers across Ireland and Europe including over 3,500 National Lottery agents. We are continuing work to re-establish the connection between the agent terminals and the network.
"To ensure all our players have an opportunity to play for the €10 million Lotto jackpot, the Lotto draw will now take place on Thursday 5 February 2015. Tickets already purchased for the midweek draw remain valid for this draw."
It thanked players and agents for their patience.
"It's a telecommunications problem," Lotto spokesperson Nuala Kane said earlier today.
"The machines have been down nationwide since 9.06 this morning. The core issues have been resolved so we expect the machines to be back up and running later this afternoon."
A subsequent Lottery statement confirmed that a 'network incident' had put lottery agents our of commission across Europe today.
Service has now been restored and National Lottery agent terminals are in the process of re-establishing their connection to the network.
The current jackpot has been rolling since December 13.
Thanks to myturn for the tip.
Better late than sorry.
October 2013
Ireland has agreed to sell a 20-year national lottery operating licence for 405 million euros ($552 million) to a joint venture that includes the owner of British operator Camelot, Ireland's spending minister said on Friday.
The deal is the first step in a privatisation drive agreed under Ireland's EU-IMF bailout that aims to bring in 3 billion euros, which will be used to pay down debt and to fund a jobs stimulus programme.
A joint venture between Ireland's state-owned postal service, An Post, and Camelot's owner, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, has been selected as the preferred bidder with a deal due to be finalised by the end of the year, a government statement said.
The incident could not have come at a worse time for the new operator of the franchise Premier Lotteries Ireland. It has been under fire over the performance of its new ticket terminals which retailers claim are plagued by glitches.
Up 3,500 terminals, equating to 95 per cent of the network, went out of commission for several hours yesterday.