€130M CO ARMAGH COUPLE IN MAMMOTH LOTTO WIN

AN ARMAGH couple will today be unveiled as the winners of €130million – Ireland’s largest ever lottery jackpot.

The couple intend to go public at a luxury hotel with their story of scooping the New Year’s Day EuroMillions draw.

Their jackpot eclipses the previous record win by Limerick housewife Dolores McNamara in 2005.

The UK National Lottery made the announcement last night that the

lucky couple would be revealed this morning in the Culloden Estate and Spa in Holywood, Co. Down.

However, they may soon be swapping that for Hollywood, as their win has projected them into the ranks of the mega-wealthy, from business leaders to movie stars.

They now have more money than Liam Neeson, who is worth €125million, Van Morrison, worth €68million, Riverdance creators John McColgan and Moya Doherty, who have €102million, and Bob Geldof, worth €49million, according to our own National Lottery.

Camelot, which operates the UK’s national lottery, said the money would be paid when the ticket is validated. The winning numbers were 01, 08, 11, 25, 28, with Lucky Stars 04 and 06.

There was only one winner of the EuroMillions jackpot last year, bringing to 13 the number of winners in Ireland since it launched in 2004.

In January 2017, a Dublin work syndicate won a €88.5million EuroMillions jackpot after buying a ticket at the Applegreen service station on the M1 northbound in Lusk, Co. Dublin.

Meanwhile, Dublin’s National Lottery HQ yesterday hosted a rather more modest prizegiving – though a family from Kerry were still delighted to have scooped the €1million top prize in the Daily Million game last Friday.

As they accepted their cheque, the family admitted to never having played the Daily Million game previously.

The delighted husband said: ‘We didn’t give the ticket a second thought until we checked the results of the EuroMillions draw last Friday night. ‘Once we realised that we hadn’t won the €120million jackpot, I swiped the Daily Million ticket on my phone and up this message popped – we’d just realised we had won a million euros. It was just unbelievable.’

And unlike the €130million winners in the North, the Kerry family have insisted on staying anonymous.