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The Irish Sweep
The Irish Hospitals Sweepstake ran from 1930 to 1987 and raised the equivalent of €170 million for the Irish health service, creating a network of over 400 hospitals, clinics and medical centres across Ireland. It also made its three founding directors extremely rich, albeit with a little systematic insider dealing from time to time, while some of the profits went directly to the Irish Republican Army. Small wonder the Reader's Digest declared the Sweep ‘the greatest bleeding heart racket in the world’.