Lucky Louth winner scoops Euromillions prize of €255,000
In addition to the usual €5,000 raffle prize, the Louth winner received an additional prize of €250,000, resulting in total winnings of €255,000, following last night's EuroMillions draw.
Typically, every EuroMillions draw produces ten winners of the €5,000 Ireland-Only Raffle prize, but this month players have the chance to win an additional €250,000, with just one more bonus winner for selection this month.
Past winners include four people in Dublin, and individual players from Meath, Limerick, Wicklow, and now Louth.
The National Lottery is urging all players in the Drogheda area to now check their tickets carefully. The all-important winning number is I-SDL-14299
If you are holding the winning ticket, be sure to contact the National Lottery prize claims team on 1800 666 222 or email claims@lottery.ie to arrange the collection of your prize.
National Lottery spokesperson Emma Monaghan said: 'While there was no winner of last night's EuroMillions jackpot worth €198,011,279, over 59,000 players in Ireland won prizes in the EuroMillions and EuroMillions plus games.
'With one more prize of €255,000 still to be won, the big question is: what county will be next? It could be you.'
Nearly 30 cent in every €1 spent on National Lottery games goes back to good causes in the areas of sport, youth, health, welfare, education, arts, heritage and the Irish language.
In total, more than €6.5 billion has been raised for good causes since the National Lottery was established 37 years ago. In 2024 alone, €239.3 million was raised for local good causes in communities across Ireland.
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Irish Daily Mirror
4 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Mary Berry's 30 minute chicken pasta bake is so good you'll make it every week
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Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
How long can I keep a bottle of wine after opening it?
This is definitely the question I get asked the most. Sometimes, you and your partner just want a single glass of wine each, or maybe your partner doesn't drink. However, once a wine comes into contact with the air, it starts to oxidise and deteriorate. It won't be undrinkable, but it will lose some of that lovely fresh fruit. White wines and sparkling wines tend to go downhill quicker than reds, and fortified wines last the longest. In general, white wines, if kept in the fridge with a cork, will last two to three days, and red wines three to five days. Red wines will keep their freshness longer if stored in the fridge. Fortified wines will usually last a few weeks. You can use a special stopper to keep sparkling wine fresh, but I find these really only work for a maximum of 24 hours. To keep your still wines fresh, you could buy a half bottle of wine – preferably screw cap – and once consumed, fill it with half of your full bottle. This will certainly increase the wine's shelf life, possibly for a week if kept chilled. [ Restaurants in Ireland where you can save money by bringing your own bottle Opens in new window ] There are gadgets such as the Vacu Vin that draw the air out of a bottle and seal it with a rubber bung. These work if the bottle is more than half-full, but I find they work less well after that. You could go for the very efficient Coravin, a machine that replaces wine with argon gas, allowing you to keep a wine in perfect condition for months. Restaurants use these to offer customers a single glass of special wine. However, they cost several hundred euro. I use one at home, but then, I taste a lot of wines. READ MORE The Vacu Vin wine saver. Buying quarter- or half-bottles is one option, but retailers tend to have a limited selection, and they can be very expensive compared to full bottles. Another option is the bag-in-box, which will keep wine fresh for weeks if not months. You can help yourself to as little or as much as you want, keeping the white wine in the fridge. The range is limited, but I suspect it will increase in the future – in Sweden more than 50 per cent of all wines sold are bag-in-box. O'Briens off-licences have a special promotion on at the moment with some attractive wines. Of these options, I would argue that using an empty half-bottle is the best way to preserve your wine and allows you to choose from the full range of wines available in your local wine shop.
Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
Only children: ‘I have great colleagues, some are as close to me as any family members I could wish for'
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Matt Cooper Matt Cooper says he might have left Ireland in his 20s if he had not been an only child 'As a child, I never felt different or lonely: it never worried me that I didn't have brothers or sisters,' says Matt Cooper . But there have been trials for the Today FM broadcaster, author and podcaster as an only child, most notably when he was in his early 30s and his parents' health began to fail. 'When they got into their 70s and 80s and fell ill, I was left in the position of trying to care for them. That's where I struggled. I was extremely busy. I had taken over as editor at the Sunday Tribune: editing a national newspaper was a really labour-intensive, time-consuming job. Aileen and myself had got married. My mother fell ill when Aileen was pregnant with our first child. I felt it would have been great to have had somebody else to help out, sharing the burden of going up and down to Cork from Dublin. My father fell ill not long after my mother had the first stroke. He died two weeks before my eldest daughter was born. Over the next number of years, I was paying for care for my mother in her own home and as her health deteriorated, she had to go into care. That was a difficult time.' READ MORE Cooper also believes he might have considered emigrating in his 20s had he not been an only child. 'I felt a responsibility to my parents because they were ageing and I was the only one.' Did being an only child play a part in his decision to have five children himself? 'No,' Cooper laughs. 'It just happened that way. But as an only child who's now a father of five, I have been interested and amused by watching the dynamics of the interaction between the children and looking at the way that their individual personalities have developed. If I look and wonder how much of it is formed by their place in the family, then I suppose by extension the fact that I was an only child would have had an impact on me. One thing I would say very much in favour of my father, he was determined that I wouldn't be a spoiled child because I was an only child. So I would have been encouraged, even when I was in school, to get part-time jobs, to earn money for myself. Being an only child gave me a degree of independence. A degree of self-sufficiency is required.' Vicki Notaro Vicki Notaro Vicki Notaro loves being an only child. 'I have definitely benefited from being my parents' sole focus,' the novelist and journalist says. 'I was a very confident child because of [being an only child], and my dad taught me to read before I even went to school. I had an unusual situation for the late 1980s, in that there were two other only children on my small cul-de-sac in Tallaght and also a couple in my class. So we had one another in that way, and it never felt odd.' Did people ever make comments to her about being an only child? 'All the time and more so to my mum: 'Oh, you ONLY have the one', etc – that must have been irritating for her,' she says. 'My parents would have loved to have had more children, but it didn't happen for them. They were always pleased that I was happy as I am. I was very content it just being the three of us at home. But that said, I appreciate the family I have gained with my husband. I adore his sister and we are extremely close. She's about to become a mother and I am so excited to be along for the ride.' Marty Morrisey Sports presenter and commentator Marty Morrissey says being an only child may have pushed him towards the job he does. Photograph: James Crombie/©INPHO Marty Morrissey 's family circumstance is an unusual one. 'I'm the only child of an only dad and an only mum, which gives me that no aunts, uncles, first cousins situation,' the RTÉ sports broadcaster says. Morrissey didn't feel a sense of difference when he was a child, but in adulthood, his family situation has affected his outlook. 'It makes you independent, but dependent on good friends,' he says. 'In my work in RTÉ I have great colleagues, and some of them are as close to me as any family members I could wish to have.' While Morrissey wouldn't consider himself an assertive type – contrary to the common perception of only children – he did battle through four years of rejection to make it into RTÉ. 'It was a thin line between being a pain in the ass and trying to get what you wanted,' he says. 'It's funny, but Ger Canning, Fred Cogley, George Hamilton, Jim Sherwin, all sports broadcasters, were all only children. I can only speak for myself, but maybe there was an element of we needed to perform to be noticed?' [ Nadine O'Regan: Nadine O'Regan: An only child is a lonely child? We're sure about our decision not to try again Opens in new window ] When Morrissey's mother died in a road traffic accident in Clare in 2021, grief hit Morrissey hard. 'I lost my Dad in 2004 and then I had my mum to myself, if I can put it like that, for 17 years. When that link is gone, you are dependent on your friends and colleagues to rally around, and that's when so many of them showed their loyalty and their love. You never recover but you try to move on. You don't want to be seen as weak, but it is a hammer blow. You just have to get back up and keep busy. That's the crucial thing.' Sonia Appelbe Sonia Appelbe wanted to go to a boarding school when she was growing up as an only child 'It was a lonely time,' says Sonia Appelbe (69), recalling her childhood in Cork. 'I wanted to go to boarding school. Arguments would occur: it was mum and I against dad, or dad and I against mum. I was piggy in the middle. I had cousins in Dublin – I'd go to them at Easter and the holidays. I used to cry for about half an hour in the car leaving them, and if they came down to Cork, when they left, I'd be crying. At 10, my dad gave me a little puppy, and this was brilliant. My mum suffered a bit from her nerves and she kept saying, 'I can't cope with this dog'. My father gave the dog away.' Now living in Wicklow, when Appelbe had her children, who are now in their 30s, she knew she would not have just one. 'I have two girls. When I had my first child, I was determined to have a second child no matter what because I just did not want her [to be an only child].' Appelbe believes that the strength of the parental relationship is what largely defines happiness in childhood. 'If your parents have a good relationship with each other, that is wonderful, but if they don't that is a very insecure feeling for the child all the way up through adolescence. And you tend to go from your home the minute you leave school.' Christy Laverty Christy Laverty says he is grateful for how being an only child shaped him Growing up in Coleraine, Co Derry, Christy Laverty (28) appreciated the privileges that stemmed from being an only child. 'Being an only child gave my parents the financial freedom to do their own thing and not have to worry so much about covering the cost of having a big family or having to upgrade a home or worrying about space for people,' he says. 'It also created an extremely close bond with both my parents, as 100 per cent of their attention and time was spent with me.' [ Geraldine Walsh: Yes, having 'just' the one child can make for a wonderful family dynamic Opens in new window ] Now based in Dublin, Laverty believes that being an only child has shaped him in ways large and small. 'I have no problem spending a Saturday wandering around a gallery on my own or taking myself out for lunch,' he says. 'I also reckon that being an only child helped me become more creative. Am I the best at sharing? Not always, but I'm generous. It's kind of: if I buy a bag of crisps, I don't really want to give you one, but I'll buy you a bag.' Laverty isn't ruling out becoming a parent in the future, but if he does, he says he will opt to have one child. 'Being gay, if I want to become a father I'm going to have to make the choice to do it. But the financial side of it is a really big factor as to whether or not I will have children. I know if I ever decide to have a child, more than one is not on the cards due to how grateful I am to how being an only child shaped me, my upbringing and my life beyond my family home.' Orla Gordon Orla Gordon says the idea that being an only child makes people unsociable does not tally with her experience 'As an only child, I have spent my life meeting people, getting to know them, and then watching their absolute shock when I say I'm an only child,' Orla Gordon says. 'They usually follow up with, 'You don't seem like an only child'. There is this weird idea that we're all self-centred and can't be sociable when, in my experience, only children are very sociable because they've been playing with and talking to strangers their whole lives.' Gordon, a professional from Dublin, had a very happy childhood and adored spending time as a kid around the kitchen table, hearing the banter between her aunts and uncles and feeling privy to an older person's world. 'Many only children spend more time with adults and get clued into things a little earlier in life,' she says. Gordon has one child herself and is satisfied with her family size. 'I felt my family was complete with one child,' she says. 'Like me, my son has lots of extended family and loads of other children his age to play with.' She can understand why more parents are deciding to keep their families small. 'Who can blame parents, with massive rent or mortgages plus creche fees and possible looming economic crises, for deciding one child is enough?'
