It was a Halloween weekend to remember for one lucky Kilkenny lady as thoughts of ghosts and ghouls were quickly replaced with shocked excitement after last Saturday's Lotto Plus 1 draw.
A €10 quick-pick ticket routinely purchased in the Topaz Service Station on the Castlecomer Road, Kilkenny yielded a whopping €350,000 windfall when she matched the first six numbers drawn.
The mystery winner, who told the National Lotto she would prefer to remain nameless, was unsurprisingly cautious when she first saw her numbers come up, before realising the magnitude of her win.
"When I first checked the ticket I thought I'd won €5,000 and was delighted. But then I rechecked it and realised I'd actually won €350,000. I got such a shock. Up until now the most I had won was €12," she said after picking up her cheque at the National Lottery's office on Tuesday.
"I lost count of the number of times I rechecked my numbers. I got such a thrill to see 'one winner', knowing that one winner was me.
"It's a great amount to win, especially with Christmas around the corner, and I'll definitely pay off my bills and loans," she said.
A regular Lotto player, Kilkenny's latest good luck story joins a growing list of people around the county to have won significant amounts in the draw or on National Lottery gameshows. Most famously one local ticket holder scooped a then record-breaking €8.6 milllion jackpot in 2007.
Since its launch, the National Lottery has raised over €3.6 billion for good causes, benefitting communities, projects and individuals in the areas of youth, sports, recreation and amenities, health and welfare, arts, culture and national heritage and the Irish language.
