Previous record win brought joy... but also some heartache
The nation’s most famous lottery winner has a life of luxury – but it’s not all rosy
DOLORES McNamara’s life changed forever when, on a night out with friends, she discovered she had become Ireland’s first and biggest EuroMillions winner.
The former cleaning lady, who raised six children in a terraced house in Limerick, won an incredible €115million, which brought her a lavish lifestyle with mansions and luxury cars.
But with her windfall came strife and family troubles as she struggled to cope with her new life.
Ms McNamara hit the headlines when she arrived at Lotto headquarters in Dublin to collect her life-changing cheque back in 2005.
It was the biggest media scrum the National Lottery office had ever seen and a shell-shocked Dolores declined to speak to the press on the day she picked up her cheque.
Instead, her solicitor issued a statement and spoke about her ‘desire to return to normality as soon as possible’.
He said: ‘She is absolutely determined that her feet and the feet of her family, will remain firmly on the ground.’
The down-to-earth woman bought a €2 ticket while purchasing phone credit on the way to her local, the Track Bar, in Garryowen, to socialise with friends.
She was watching the draw on television in the bar when she pulled her ticket out of her handbag, threw it on the table and told one of her friends: ‘Check that for me.’ She calmly downed a brandy and burst into tears before the champagne was popped and the celebrations began.
A bar worker described the scenes following the win: ‘Then the drink started flowing and the champagne was poured and we had a great night celebrating. Dolores is a real nice woman and none of her friends believe this will change her drastically.’
A famous photo emerged of a shocked but ecstatic looking Dolores gripping the winning ticket surrounded by friends in the bar.
The night before she picked up the winnings, she stayed at the Red Cow Hotel in Dublin, getting a new haircut and a manicure, before the Lottery sent a black Jaguar to collect her.
Her solicitor, David Sweeney, got out of the car first, holding a briefcase that contained her ticket. Then out came Ms McNamara, flanked by two bodyguards. At a press conference held 90 minutes later, Mr Sweeney said Ms McNamara wanted to thank everyone who had wished her well in her good fortune. She hoped for a ‘sense of closure’ to the publicity.
Dolores has only ever spoken once publicly since her win – to her local paper, the Limerick Leader.
She said: ‘The question that has been asked of me most frequently was how I felt about my win, and my answer is still the same – I feel disbelief and shock. Buying a ticket for that Euro jackpot was a spur of the moment decision.
‘I’d actually gone into the shop to buy a top-up for my phone and just asked the lady for a Lotto ticket.’
Six months after her win she bought her first major extravagance, Lough Derg Hall, a sprawling mansion set on 38 acres just outside the village of Killaloe and less than 30 minutes from her old home in Limerick.
Dolores also looked after her family with her windfall, buying houses in and around the area for her children Dawn, Gary, Kim, Kevanne, Dean, and Lee. She also bought six racehorses for her bricklayer husband Adrian.
The Limerick family have had a roller-coaster experience, with the ability to live a fabulously opulent lifestyle offset by worries about their safety. Six months after her windfall, Dolores and her family found themselves plagued by kidnap plots and death threats which forced them to go into hiding.
In November, gardaí confirmed that there had been a plot to kidnap her son, Gary, and hold him to ransom. Gardaí visited Dolores after learning of the plot by a prominent Limerick criminal gang.
Gary was forced to flee his home on the outskirts of Limerick with his girlfriend and child.
All Dolores’s children were equipped with personal alarms and their new home was fitted with a major security system amid ongoing fears for the family’s safety.
Security was also very tight at her palatial home in Co. Clare.
Gary was left with a bill of almost €130,000 after burglars stole expensive fittings and antiques and sold them on as scrap for under €1,400.
His uninsured lakeside mansion, Tinarana House, Co. Clare, was ‘gutted’ by thieves who stole chandeliers, light fittings, brass items and copper piping.
Dolores purchased the mansion from a consortium for €1.46million in January 2013, but her son and his wife, Michelle, paid an additional €2million for 270 acres of surrounding lands.
However, the home was not
Bought ticket on way to the pub
insured as there was no one living in the 19th-century 16-bedroom pile at the time of the robbery.
Her family also invested a part of her fortune in the property market in Detroit, Michigan.
The McNamaras, including Dolores and five of her six adult children, are thought to have spent about $5million (€4.7million) on more than 100 homes in poorer parts of the city between 2012 and 2014.
Then, in 2015, she was hit by a car after moving to her Killaloe home. Two years later, she received €8,401 in a court settlement.
During a series of leaked stories that infuriated the family, Michael Lynch, 29, who is Kevanne’s expartner and the father of her child, claimed that Ms McNamara gave Kevanne €420,000 to buy a home and cars for her and Mr Lynch.
But when the couple split, Mr Lynch, from O’Malley Park in Limerick city, criticised Dolores’s ‘meanness’ after he got a 2001-registered Toyota Corolla worth €10,000, as opposed to the BMW that he claimed Kevanne promised him.
He also alleged that Ms McNamara had become paranoid, saying she had turned her home into a fortress surrounded by eight-foot walls.
Michael Lynch was later left in a critical condition after being shot with a handgun.
Dolores’s nephew Anthony ‘Noddy’ McCarthy, was one of five men convicted for the gangland killings of Limerick crime boss Kieran Keane.
In 2009, her son, Dean – who was 19 at the time – was jailed for four months for drug driving.