Tipperary woman claims €500,000 EuroMillions Plus jackpot
Last Updated: Tuesday 7th July 2020, 17:22 pm
There have been lottery celebrations in Ireland once again after the 25th February EuroMillions Plus draw produced another winner. One lucky ticket holder, who has chosen to remain anonymous, scooped the top prize of €500,000 after matching all five numbers, and so joins a host of previous big lottery winners from the Emerald Isle.
The successful ticket holder, a woman from Tipperary, found out she had won the jackpot after being prompted by colleagues to check her numbers once they had discovered the lucky ticket had been sold locally.
When interviewed about her win she said, “We were beside my computer, so we went to the results section of the National Lottery website and pulled up the numbers and lo and behold the second line on my ticket had all five numbers. The lads started jumping around in excitement before we pulled it together so we wouldn’t arouse suspicion from anyone else in the office. I normally check my tickets once a month, so it’s down to my colleagues I found out so quickly.”
The new lottery winner plans to spend some of her money on travelling later in the year. She said, “I am not the most well-travelled person in the world, certainly not as much as I would like. With this lucky win I’ll be able to kick-start seeing some new far-flung places. I’m going to do nothing for the moment, as I don’t think this has even sunk in yet. The last few days have been a blur, so once I’ve come to terms with the win, I’ll put more of a plan together.”
The lucky ticket was bought from Ely’s Centra store in Thurles, and these stores are proving to be fortunate places to purchase lottery tickets as this is not the first time that Ely's group has sold a ticket that turned out to be a big winner. A previous customer scooped a €250,000 Lotto Plus 2 top prize in 2017.
Before the winning ticket holder came forward, Ronan Ely, one of the owners of the Ely group family-run business, was understandably delighted to have had another winning customer buy a ticket from their store.
He said, “It’s tremendous news to get and there’s a massive buzz about Thurles town. We have no idea who the winner could be as it’s a very busy store, so it really could be anyone. We hope it brings a lot of happiness to the winner, whoever he or she may be.”
The winning combination that landed the Tipperary resident her half-a-million-euro windfall was 15, 16, 17, 37 and 45. Although there was no winner of the massive €51 million EuroMillions jackpot for that draw, more than 45,000 players in Ireland won prizes.
In fact, Ireland has a rich history of celebrating some big EuroMillions winners, dating all the way back to 2005. In July that year, Dolores McNamara from Limerick became Ireland’s first big EuroMillions winner, scooping over €115 million. In June 2013 another winning ticket, which was sold in Beaumount, Dublin, shared a jackpot worth over €187 million. The lucky Dublin winner earned half of the jackpot, picking up over €93 million.
In September 2014, a Dublin syndicate scooped €86.7 million after buying their ticket in Centra, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin, before another syndicate of friends won over €66 million in January 2016, splitting the jackpot of €132,376,632. The ticket was bought at Eason’s store, Fairgreen Shopping Centre, Carlow.
Then just last year, the Naul family syndicate from Co Dublin won Ireland’s biggest EuroMillions prize, claiming the €175.4 million jackpot. They had kept the ticket in an Argos catalogue under the mattress overnight and described the win as a "dream come true"
