National Lottery celebrates 1,000th Lotto draw

The National Lottery celebrated its 1,000th Lotto draw at the weekend but failed to produce its 101st millionaire.

Lottery management had been hoping the landmark draw on Saturday would result in a new millionaire - and a PR opportunity made in heaven.

Last Wednesday's draw produced the 100th Lotto millionaire, a Wicklow man who has chosen anonymity.

Since the Lotto was launched in April 1988, there have been 2,963 Lotto players who have won outright or shared in a jackpot, with their winning tickets netting them more than £525 million. With 1.2 million regular players, that means almost one in 400 regular players on average have claimed a jackpot prize.

A spokesman for the National Lottery said Irish Lotto millionaires "tend to be very sensible. We advise all winners to get full financial advice. They tend not to rush off and buy the house of their dreams or quit work the next day.

The lottery has paid out over £1 billion in prize money since it began and has raised over £700 m for beneficiary projects.

The largest jackpot to date, of £7.5 m, was split two ways in November 1996 between an anonymous group of seven from outside Dublin and a couple from Baileborough, Co Cavan. The biggest single win was £6.2 m.

The largest number of winning players in a syndicate was 88. The group, working for the ESB in Longford, won £250,000 in February 1997. The largest number of winners for a single jackpot was 20. Each scooped £119,842 in November 1991.