THE man behind the counter in the GPO last night said it was unprecedented. He was "preferring to the queues of, people besieging it all day yesterday to buy Lottery tickets. He had never come across anything like it."
"Scandalous," said Ms Ann Gallagher of Labour in the Seanad yesterday, referring to the £6 million plus prize. She has never bought a lottery ticket in her life, she said.
"I'd bore a big hole in my mattress and put it all there," said Ms Maura McGovern from Rathmines, contemplating what she would do if she won. She was in a long queue at the St Stephen's Green Centre. "Sure the whole country is full of crooks, you can trust no one," she explained, and named a few, who cannot be named.
"Obscene," said Mr Michael Mulcahy of Fianna Fail in the Seanad. "I think it is creating a materialistic ethos in this country that we can do without."
"Spend, spend, spend," was what a woman in the GPO said she would do if she won, "and buy lots of houses." She would not be named either. "Sure if I won then you'd know who I was," she explained. And 50 per cent of jackpot winners to date have been anonymous.
Also at the GPO, Mark Deevy from Waterford dreamed of Jamaica and living there for the rest of his life. He'd buy nice cars and a nice house.
Barrie Hanley from Dundrum would buy a Manchester United season ticket, a house in the midlands, and a provincial newspaper "so I could have a bit of fun."
Cecily Holohan, at the Stephen's Green ticket kiosk, was worn out. "Since nine this morning it's like this," she said, indicating the hopefuls lined in front of her "millions of them."
As he waited, Brian O'Leary from Greystones wondered about the pub he would buy "somewhere hot." Jim Stephens from Rathfarnham was planning six weeks in the Lake Palace Hotel at Jaipur in India, and Barbara O'Carroll from Newbridge planned to put the money into her lingerie business.
She hoped there was more than one winner. "There is general disquiet about the size of the prize at the moment," Mr Maurice Manning of Fine Gael told the Seanad.
He put it to the House that people in this country accepted the lottery as a way of life. "They enjoy playing it," he said, "so I think we would not want to be too puritanical in talking about the Lottery." He will arrange a debate on the issue in the near future.
