No April Fool as Giustina wins €5.7m

The first Giustina Macari knew about her 50% share in Saturday’s €11m lotto jackpot was when the woman behind the counter of her local shop in Kildare told her she needed to ring the National Lottery offices.

She had nipped in to L Malone newsagents, the shop opposite her family’s takeaway, to check her numbers.

“I knew someone had won €5.7m. She put in my ticket then she just told me I had to ring the National Lottery because I was a winner.”

Her €10 ticket, on which she had picked her own numbers, had just made her €5,763,000.50 richer.

By last night, as she shared a celebratory glass of wine with family and friends, she admitted the news still had not sunk in.

Giustina, who turns 32 this year, did not reveal her immediate plans for her windfall other than joking “retire”.

She did, however, disclose that she and her boyfriend, Criasiina Paulielo, had been “planning on things” before the win and they would now have “more planning to do”.

Giustina, whose parents are both Italian but who was born and reared in Kildare, has a diploma in human resource management, but her passion is horses.

As well as being a level one instructor with Western Riding, she is a keen barrel racer, a rodeo event in which a horse and rider attempt to complete a clover-leaf pattern around preset barrels in the fastest time.

Also celebrating was the store in which she had bought the ticket. “There’s been great excitement since we discovered we’d sold a winning ticket,” said Louis Hennessy, owner of Malone’s newsagents.

“It’s the first time we’ve sold one in 25 years of being a National Lottery agent. To be honest, I thought it was an April Fool’s joke when I heard it first.”

The second of the two winning tickets for Saturday’s draw, which at €11,526,001 was the biggest prize of the year, was sold in Tesco supermarket in Bettystown, Co Meath.

Stephen Barriscale, the manager of the Tesco branch, said he had no clues about the identify of the owner of the winning €6 mixed play ticket bought in the store.

“We were so busy on Saturday that we had two staff operating the Lotto machine. Hundreds of people would have bought tickets so it could have been anyone,” said Mr Barriscale.

He said it was impossible to say if the winner was a local as Bettystown, which is one of the fastest growing towns in Ireland, has a large mix of residents and tourists.

“The store has been particularly busy in the past week as the local caravan parks have all opened,” he said.

Both outlets will receive €7,500 as seller of winning tickets. Mr Barriscale said the money would be distributed to the staff’s social clubs.

Saturday’s prize was the 11th largest jackpot in the history of the Lotto. The biggest ever jackpot of €18,963,441 was won by a 16-strong syndicate in 2008.