4 November 2017
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
A Cork man who has been under huge pressure financially, living month to month and working overtime, claimed a life-changing prize of €500,000 – on Friday – after his numbers came up on the EuroMillions Plus draw.
Positive PR from the National Lottery
The husband and Dad said the win will transform his families lives, allowing him and his wife to pay their mortgage and put aside money for their young children’s education and futures.
They were the second big winners through the doors of the National Lottery winners room today. A recently retired Dublin woman – who was unaware she had a winning ticket in her handbag for four weeks – collected her cheque for a handsome €320,208 after Matching 5 + Lucky Star in the EuroMillions Draw from Friday 29th September.
The lucky Cork man sat beside his wife in the National Lottery Winner’s Room this morning, clearly overjoyed at all the zeroes on his winning €500,000 cheque The couple said they were still having trouble believing they had won the princely sum, but vowed to do “a lot of sensible things” with the money, including bringing their children on a dream holiday to Disneyland Paris next year.
The winner described the moment he broke the news to his wife that they had hit the jackpot. He said: “I came in from work after calling up the National Lottery, where they broke the news to me that I had won €500,000. I told the kids to go out and play and asked my wife to sit down. Immediately she thought that I had lost my job so I had to reel her in for a minute and then just told her we’d won half a million!”
“A few days have now passed and both of us are awake every night talking about this win. I’m still waiting for someone to wake me up from this dream. We’re going to clear the mortgage and put money aside for our children’s college fund and towards securing their futures. Our eldest has been asking us for years can we go to Disneyland so we’re going to do that next year!” he continued.
The man spoke of how tight finances have been over the past couple of years, like a lot of families all over the country: “Month to month things have been tight and we’re always looking at where we can save money and even look to do overtime where I can. This win is going to allow us to plan for all of our futures and I can’t say how grateful we are to have won”.
The winner bought his winning ticket at O’Reilly Maxol Service Station, Watercourse Road, in Cork City owned by Seamus O’Reilly who is no stranger to big National Lottery wins. The store sold two Lotto jackpot winning tickets in 1991 and in 1992, and a Lotto Plus 1 ticket worth €300,000 in 2004.
