Four copies of the new Harry Potter book The Order of the Phoenix have been sold by accident at a Tesco store in the Midlands.
RTÉ News has learned that a delivery of the books was made on Thursday to the Tesco store at the Athlone shopping centre in Athlone.
Yesterday afternoon staff accidentally stacked the books on the shelves and four of the books were sold before the mistake was detected.
A spokesperson for Tesco Ireland has confirmed that four copies of the new Harry Potter book were sold in Tesco Athlone last night.
The spokesperson said that this was an inadvertent error and that all remaining copies were immediately withdrawn.
Earlier this week, copies were bought off the shelf in shops in New York and Montreal.
The US publishers of the book have begun a court case against the New York Daily News, which published excerpts from the novel last Wednesday after buying a copy in a health food shop.
