They won €8.6m — and stayed in watching TV after a bottle of wine

MOST people would break out the bubbly and paint the town red, but the lucky Kilkenny couple who scooped Ireland’s second-biggest Lotto win held a more modest celebration.

The husband and wife stayed in front of the TV with a bottle of wine and then went to bed. But they did have trouble sleeping after discovering they had won a cool €8.6m.

The two, who want to remain anonymous, headed to the National Lottery offices yesterday, where they were presented with their jackpot cheque for €8,606,212.

The husband explained how they came to buy their lucky 4 Quickpick ticket: “I was at home on Tuesday when I thought to myself: ‘There’s a big Lotto jackpot this week and we should have a ticket.’ I called my wife, who was out in the car, and asked her to pop in and buy a ticket.”

His wife added: “I went to Statoil to buy the ticket, which is unusual, as it’s not my regular shop.

But I stuck to my usual amount and put the ticket in my wallet.”

The couple, who have lived in Kilkenny for 20 years and have a family, awoke the day after the draw and heard about “a big winner” on the radio.

“We laughed at the thought that it could be us, and, would you believe, actually decided not to check the ticket so that we could dream on a bit longer about what it would be like to win. Later, my husband rang and told me that the ticket was bought at Statoil on the Castlecomer Road and asked me to check our ticket. I went online and saw that the numbers — 11, 13, 19, 23, 41 and 44 — matched. I told him on the telephone that we had won and he said that he’d come home. We just sat and stared at the ticket, then each other, and could not take it in at all.”

The family were still in shock that night, the husband explained: “We didn’t do anything wild, just had a bottle of wine and watched television. But I was worried about the ticket — where would we keep it — so I hardly slept at all and finally got up at about 4am. Handing over the ticket and collecting the cheque has brought me a great sense of relief, I can tell you.

“We’re going to look after our family and maybe invest in property for the future. We’d both love to travel more and bring the family with us.”

Their jackpot is the second-biggest in the Irish lottery, which began in 1988.