The results of this year's Diversity Visa Green Gard lottery are now available online.

This is the first-time ever that the State Department has made the results available online.

If you applied for this year's program, you can check your status now on a special State Department website.

Applicants need to have the following:

- the confirmation page received when you entered the lottery

- confirmation numer, last name/family name, and year of birth

The DV lottery gives away 55,000 visas through this program each year which enables people to become permanent residents of the United States.

After five years of continuous residence, green card holders are entitled to start a naturalization process to become U.S citizens.

Ireland has fared poorly in the lottery in recent years.

The recent three years have seen about 200 people from North and South win green cards.

For instance, the results of last year's lottery saw just 207 Irish people win green cards, 163 in the Republic and 34 from the North.

That means that people in the Ireland have less than a 0.4 percent chance of winning a green card.

The lottery result website is at http://dvlottery.state.gov/ESC/