Woman cleans up with €1m ticket

ONE lucky woman won €1million after she discovered a forgotten EuroMillions ticket while cleaning her house and realised that she had scooped the Ireland Only Raffle jackpot.

The young woman, who is from Dublin and does not wish to be identified, found the ticket during a post-Christmas clean-up in her home and scanned it using the National Lottery app.

She was told to contact Lotto head office, and soon learned her ticket – bought on the day of the draw, Friday, October 27, at the Londis Attyfinlay Autocentre in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim – was a double winner.

Lottery winners have 90 days to claim their prizes, so she came dangerously close to losing out on a fortune.

The lucky winner was first told she had scooped a €5,000 prize, before Lotto officials revealed this was just the first of two jackpots she had won.

She said: ‘Straight away, I was told that I was one of the ten winners of the €5,000 raffle prize and I was ecstatic to be starting the New Year with €5,000 in my back pocket.

‘The National Lottery official on the other end of the line asked me if I was sitting down as they proceeded to tell me that I had won a million euro.

‘It was the strangest feeling in my life to be told that I had become a millionaire with a ticket I had bought last October. I still cannot believe this is happening to me.’

She added: ‘The money will give me the option to do a lot of things I’d never have dreamed of. I’m going to have a peek at some houses and maybe even a car upgrade.’

It was also a good start to the New Year for a carpenter from Cavan and a woman in her 30s from Dublin, both of whom collected €100,000 prizes from the Christmas Millionaire Raffle at Lotto HQ yesterday.

The Cavan winner bought the ticket as a Christmas present to himself, while the Dublin winner was given her ticket as a present by her father.