Irish Examiner view: Making the Lotto draw easier to win

Ireland’s national lottery has not had a winner-takes-all since June 6 and Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan wants an audit to reassure the punters

There were only 36 balls in the drum for the first Lotto draw on April 16, 1986.

So, 36 or 47, that is the question. And it is exercising anyone who dreams of picking up a Lotto jackpot, or whose memory stretches back to 1986 when only three dozen balls were in play.

Statisticians of the future may ponder probability density and regression analysis to solve this problem but the fact is that Ireland’s national lottery has not had a winner-takes-all since June 6, and the jackpot has been capped at €19m since September.