This probably has been answered before, but I’m kind of new here so…
Before every state got it’s own lottery, the big thing everyone wanted was to win the Irish Sweepstakes. What exactly was that, how much did it pay, and, most of all, why don’t you hear anything about it any more?
check here
I didn’t follow p all the links from the Britannica article, but the Irish Sweepstakes was abolished by Ireland when a scandal developed that less than 10% of the gross (and perhaps as little as 2-5% of the gross) was actually being passed back to the hospital fund that was supposed to benefit from it. The rest of the money had been spent on “administrative” costs that included a lot of personal luxury for the administrators.