So many people are trying to buy last-minute tickets for the New Year national lottery draw that the organisation has admitted it can’t cope, RTL news said on Wednesday afternoon.

‘It is so busy that a number of transactions have failed and people have not been able to buy lottery tickets,’ a spokesman for the Statsloterij told the broadcaster. ‘We are working as hard as we can to solve the problems and luckily the site is not down completely.’

Around midday, some 80,000 tickets were being sold in a short space of time but that has now slipped back to 8,000 an hour, the spokesman said. The lottery organisation is advising people to buy last-minute tickets in shops, rather than online.

The main prize in tonight’s draw is €30m but in total €70m in prizes will be handed out. A single ticket costs €30.

The postcode lottery has nearly €50m in prizes to distribute.