With the Euromillions heading towards an eye watering €150 million on Friday night, anyone anxious to secure the jackpot might be wondering where they should go to buy their winning ticket.
Well wonder no more.
A list of the top 10 luckiest shops in Ireland has been released by the National Lottery and if you believe in good fortune over randomness then the place to buy a lottery ticket – in terms of jackpot winning frequency – is the GPO.
The An Post headquarters on Dublin's O'Connell St has sold 14 jackpot and top prize winning tickets since the National Lottery was established in 1988.
While the number of jackpot tickets the An Post people have sold is certainly impressive, when the cash amounts of all its cumulated wins are totted up, the total of €15,054,036 does not look so good – at least when standing alongside some of the big Euromillions wins of the past.
Limerick woman, Dolores McNamara, scooped the 12th highest jackpot in the competition's history when she took home over €115 million in the summer of 2005 while a ticket sold early this year in Dublin was worth close to €90 million. Both wins leaves the GPO's totals in the ha'penny place.
O'Neill's Newsagents in Bridgend, Lifford, Co Donegal is where the second highest number of winning tickets have been sold. All told it has had 12 Jackpot winners who walked away with a combined jackpot of €4,993,195.
“We have people coming into the shop from all over the country in the hope that they are our next big winners,” the newsagent’s owner Pearse O’Neill said. “We haven’t had a jackpot win for a while so we’re definitely due another big one very soon to cement our place on top of the list!”
Coming in third in the top 10 is Hickey's of Skibbereen in Co Cork where nine Jackpots, worth €€7,860,445 have been won.
Donegal features again at number four thanks to McKenna's Texaco in Muff where nine wins totalling €6,123,283 have been recorded.
A SuperValu in Finglas and a Spar on the Galtymore Road on Drimnagh both also recorded nine wins with the former racking up a cash total of €3,879,613 and the latter securing €3,987,313 for it shoppers.
In cash terms the Ardkeen Superstores on the Dunmore Road in Waterford is right on the money. While it has only recorded eight jackpot sales over the last 30 years, its winning total is a not too shabby €19,507,321.
Rounding out the top 10 places is the Tesco in the Nutgrove Shopping Centre where seven wins totals just over €5 million were recorded, the Dalkey News Centre which has had six wins amounting to €9,371,337 and a SuperValu on Pearse Street in Co. Cork which has also had six wins worth €8,574,413.
