Irish lottery syndicate can’t count lucky stars

EURO Lottery luck nearly struck for the second time in Limerick last Friday.

A group of Dunnes Stores workers came within a fraction of the €120 million super prize and overtake Euro lottery millionaire, Dolores McNamara’s €115.4 million win of 2005.

The Dunnes Stores syndicate, who all work in the Childers Road outlet, had a ticket with all correct five digits selected from one to 50.

But they missed out correctly getting just the two stars also required from numbers one to nine.

Store manger, Brian O’Sullivan, who was one of the syndicate said: “We came tantalisingly close to taking the €120 million euro super prize. I will put my winnings into my new house.”

The syndicate invested a total of €90 buying 45 combinations.

On one of their tickets the Dunnes Stores syndicate had the correct five digit combination of 03, 04, 08, 44 and 50.

And from the nine stars they chose 04 and 05.

Alas they were just a whisker out as the winning stars were 07 and 08.

The Dunnes syndicate won €97,800, each getting just over €5,400.

They were the only Irish entry in the Euro draw on Friday to get all five digits correctly.

And their ticket was one of only 14 out of tens of millions with the correct five digits.

One non-Irish ticket holder who had all five digits and one star collected €393,862.

There was no outright winner of the €120 million euro super prize which required the five correct digits and two correct stars.

Mark Hurley, the fresh food manager at the store said: “I turned on the Aertel when I got home from work on Friday night at around 11pm and as I looked at the numbers, my heart was in my mouth. We had the five numbers and got very close.”

Mark, 35, said some syndicate members will travel to Dublin to collect the winning cheque.

And they don’t think they’ll have a problem getting a few hours off from their boss, Brian O’Sullivan.

Mark said: “We will have a night out and I hope to go to Las Vegas next year with my wife Nicola out of the winnings. I have been there before and always wanted to go back. I like a flutter and it will be nice to go back to Las Vegas with lucky money to try my luck there.”