More woes for lottery as system crashes again

National Lottery ticket terminals briefly crashed yesterday for the fourth time in just over a month.

In a statement, Premier Lotteries Ireland confirmed there was a short disruption to the service around 6pm, but that service was restored within minutes after back-up systems kicked in.

“There was a minor service interruption to the network at around 6pm, PLI’s network monitoring systems immediately captured the incident and transferred over to the back-up system, restoring normal service within minutes,” said the statement.

Last month, a system crash forced a deferral of the February 4 midweek draw. The postponement had been the first in the Lotto’s 28-year history, after technical issues caused a service outage across 95% of the network.

Premier Lotteries Ireland, a group which includes UK lottery giant Camelot and An Post, last year succeeded in a €405m bid to operate the National Lottery licence for the next 20 years.

Chief executive designate Dermot Griffin had pledged investment in the National Lottery to provide “state-of-the art technology to facilitate game innovation”.

Almost 4,000 new ticket terminals, supplied by the Greek company Intralot, were distributed to retail outlets nationwide, boasting an upgraded interface and functions such as optical reading. However, retailers reported multiple technical difficulties, such as failures to scan barcodes correctly.

Earlier this week, Mr Griffin appeared before the Oireachtas finance committee to answer questions about the recent crashes.

In relation to the recent outages of ticket terminals experienced by retailers across the country, he said there will always be initial problems with such a “huge undertaking”.

Mr Griffin described the deferral of the February 4 draw as a rare occurrence, and said a report on the incident has been completed and submitted to the regulator with a view to preventing a repeat.

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