The man who bought the winning Lotto ticket for Wednesday night's jackpot of more than £4 million returned to Co Offaly yesterday from Barcelona. Mr Seanie Farrell from Edenderry was in Spain to cheer Manchester United in the European Cup final when he received a phone from call his sister telling him their syndicate had picked the winning numbers for the draw and the jackpot of £4,080,973.
Seven of the eight members of the syndicate are employees of Williams-Waller, a fertiliser plant at Rathangan, Co Kildare. Each should receive just over £510,121. Mr Farrell left the firm last year, but remained a member of the syndicate and collected the money each week. Mr Farrell said: "At first I thought it was some kind of joke."
A spokeswoman for the National Lottery said yesterday that nobody had come in yet to claim the cheque. It had heard rumours, but it could not say definitely until the person or persons presented themselves at their offices.
If there had been one individual winner, he or she would have been the 113th Lotto millionaire since it began in April 1988. Wednesday's jackpot of £4,080,973 was the sixth biggest. The largest jackpot was for £7.4 million in November 1996 and that was shared between two ticket-holders.