€10m jackpot Lotto draw to take place tonight after first-ever cancellation

The Lotto draw - with a €10m jackpot - will take place this evening after it was cancelled last night for the first time ever.

A telecommunications problem saw 3,500 lottery machines go down yesterday, meaning customers were not able to buy tickets.

As a result, the €10m jackpot draw had to be postponed. Tickets already purchased for the midweek draw will still be valid tonight.

Member of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents Joe Sweeney said problems with the ticket system have persisted for the last two months.

Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI) last year won a tender process with a bid of €405m to run the National Lottery.

"I always (thought of) the Lottery as the most dependable, reliable people that we deal with. They were always 100% accurate," he said.

"If we had a problem it was dealt with immediately (so) I can’t understand why these on-going problems have persisted for the last two months."

Eddie Banville of Premier Lotteries Ireland, which only took over the LOTTO franchise late last year, said the draw will go ahead tonight and tickets can be purchased today.

However, he said they need to know precisely what caused it before it can be completely confident about the future.

"I can't really [say] how confident we are about the future until we complete our detailed examination about what went wrong," he said.