It was a bank holiday weekend to remember for a lucky South East family syndicate who today claimed a €1,005,000 prize from Friday’s EuroMillions ‘Ireland Only Raffle’ on a ticket bought in a hospital shop when they were visiting a sick friend.
The unsuspecting family spent most of the weekend thinking they had won €5,000 - only to discover that they had, in fact, won an additional €1 million!
The players bought their golden ticket at the Aramark store at the University Hospital in Waterford while visiting a family friend. When the EuroMillions results came through on Friday night, the family were delighted when they thought they had won €5,000 and celebrated over the weekend.
A family spokesperson said: “We checked the results online over the weekend and our EuroMillions raffle number was listed as one of the €5,000 winners. We were just absolutely thrilled with that and little did we know that there was an extra €1 million on top of that again.
"When I mentioned to one of the kids that I had bought the ticket at the hospital in Waterford, they said the winning one million Euro “Ireland Only Raffle” ticket was sold there. There was an unbelievable scramble to find out if we were the lucky winner of the extra €1 million prize. We haven’t been to sleep all weekend with the excitement and to get the confirmation from the National Lottery this morning was a huge relief.”
The winner insisted that they would not be getting carried away with their win and careful planning would need to be done before spending their EuroMillions windfall:
“Well we’ve only really believed we have had this big win today when we had it confirmed so we haven’t had any time to think about what we’re going to do. Each of the members of the syndicate will get an equal share so I know there is a couple of mortgages to pay off before they start any celebratory spending.
"We are an incredibly close family and I couldn’t think of anything better in the world than to win with them as a group,” they added.
This was the fourth EuroMillions Draw ‘Ireland Only Raffle’ in 2018 in which one player in Ireland was guaranteed to win €1 million. Previous winners in 2018 have come from Dublin, Waterford and Galway.
Meanwhile, it’s been a super lucky Lottery week for County Cork, following last Saturday’s €8.3 million jackpot win in the county (sold in Dunnes Stores in Bishopstown) but one shop in the town of Fermoy is on its own winning streak as a woman today claimed a tidy €30,000 scratch card prize she bought in a shop which had another big Lotto win last week.
Less than one week ago, a 15 person work syndicate from Herlihy’s Centra Store in Fermoy picked up their cheque for €117,970, won after the syndicate matched five numbers and the bonus on the Lotto draw from 25th July, bagging each member almost €8,000 each, on a ticket bought in the store. This weekend the shop had another winner as a woman won €30,000 on a Diamond Bingo Doubler scratch card.
The winner said: “It is a great time of the year to win the money as I have children starting college and going back to school soon, so I am delighted that this will help me out a lot and I might change our car too. I heard the news about the staff winning on Lotto and was happy for them all. Little did I know I would be winning thirty grand in the shop days later!”
Want to share that winning feeling? Play EuroMillions. Tonight’s jackpot is an estimated €75 million. Play in store, on the National Lottery App or online by 7:30pm this evening for your chance to win.
Nearly 30 cent in every €1 spent on all National Lottery games go back to Good Causes in the areas of sport, youth, health, community, arts, heritage and the Irish language. In total more than €5 Billion has been raised for Good Causes since the National Lottery was established 30 years ago.
