€24m jackpot just the ticket 22-member syndicate of bus drivers

The National Lottery has confirmed that the holder of the winning ticket for last Friday’s €24m Euromillions jackpot has contacted the organisation to claim the multi-million euro prize.

While the National Lottery has remained reticent as to the identity of the winners, colleagues at Dublin Bus have identified the ticket holders as a 22-member syndicate of drivers at the company.

“I am delighted for each and every one of them and their families,” said Dublin Bus chief executive Ray Coyne.

“It is great to see such a large number of our employees sharing in the win. We wish them all the best,” he said.

John Cassidy, a driver at Dublin Bus who won €126 in his own lottery syndicate last week, said the other drivers are delighted after their colleagues’ win.

“It’s absolutely brilliant news, it’s great. We’re thrilled for them all, and the fact that there’s 22 of them is great.

“Our syndicate had our win on Tuesday, we had four of the six numbers.

“If the six had come in we’d have won €15m,” Mr Cassidy told Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ Radio 1.

“I’m chuffed for them because you know if you work with people for 25 or 30 years, and the job you do is a difficult old job in all weather, and all of a sudden they get a break. It’s absolutely brilliant,” he said.

Mr Cassidy said he had met a number of members of the multi-million euro winning syndicate over the weekend and said they were in “disbelief”.

“Total disbelief and checking the numbers four, five, six, seven times. Checking with each other and then like rabbits in the headlights, just standing there. There’s no point in talking to them, they’re just standing there. They’re out of it,” he said.

“They are all bus drivers, they all work out of central control and have all been working here for years.

“They would be people that socialise together, go to matches together and the nature of the job we do, it being shift work, we spend as much time, indeed more time in the company of each other than at times we do with our own families.

“They’re the best of friends too,” Mr Cassidy said.

It is the ninth time the Euromillions jackpot has been won in Ireland.

The biggest jackpot to be won in Ireland went to Limerick woman Dolores McNamara, who won over €115m in July 2005.