Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Mr. Algeo for appearing before the committee. This is something that is of great interest to many people. My first question relates to the probabilities of this happening. It is my understanding that with 47 balls an individual has a one in 10.7 million chance of winning. An average of 1.4 million tickets are sold per game. Therefore, there is a 13% probability of winning and, obviously, an 87% chance of it being rolled over. That is 13% if each of the 1.4 million tickets per game is different.

Regarding the 87% chance of it being rolled over, the probability of that happening 54 times in a row is 0.005%. Obviously, a probability of 0.005% is highly unusual. Mr. Algeo said in his opening statement that it is highly unusual that this lotto jackpot still has no winner and that given the number of tickets purchased since early June the chances are akin to rolling a dice 37 times without the number six arising. My calculations on that is that it is double that on the basis of the 1.4 million tickets sold per game and that the probability would be 0.01%. Could Mr. Algeo clarify if it is that the number of tickets sold per game has reduced? From my calculations that would mean that there would be approximately 847,000 tickets sold per game. Perhaps he will clarify that initially.