Fifteen members of a Lotto syndicate are claiming they won last weekend's Lotto jackpot but say a 16th member has absconded with the winning ticket.
The National Lottery has been injuncted from paying out the €1.27 million prize while the High Court considers the case - the second time in six weeks the issue of who owns a winning Lotto ticket has ended up in court.
The case centres on a Mr Noel Kelly, of unknown address, who, according to an affidavit read to the court, was asked to buy €32 worth of tickets for the syndicate, construction workers on a site in north Dublin. The other members of the group claim he arrived for work on Monday saying the tickets had won nothing, before tearing them up and throwing them in a skip.
The syndicate grew suspicious when, an hour later, it emerged that Mr Kelly's partner was claiming to have won the jackpot. They retrieved the fragments from the skip, which have since been found to comprise three tickets bought at a newsagents in Glasnevin, and another from a shop in Fairview. A fourth ticket from the Glasnevin newsagents - the jackpot winner - was presented to the National Lottery on Monday, it is claimed. A syndicate member who approached Mr Kelly yesterday morning says the latter agreed there had been a mix-up. Pressed further, he said, he would ask his "mot" to split the money. However he failed to turn up for a subsequent appointment and had not been heard from since.
A solicitor for the 15 said the Lottery confirmed that three of the tickets rescued from the skip, plus the winner, had all been bought from the Glasnevin newsagents in an 80-second period on Saturday. The court made an interim injuction on payment of the winnings until Friday.