SO it wasn’t a local winner after all.

A hard-working mother from Co. Cork is today (Monday) celebrating a quarter of a million euro win after she picked up her massive prize from Lotto HQ in Dublin City after she won the Lotto Plus 2 top prize on Saturday 12th October.

The lucky mother who wishes for her win to remain private discussed how she was on a well-earned spa break in Co. Kerry when she bought her winning ticket in Garveys SuperValu on Rock Street on her way to a local spa.

“You really couldn’t make it up!” she laughed. “I had been looking forward to the spa break for such a long time and on the way to Kerry, I randomly decided to stop off and get a Lotto ticket as an extra treat for my little break. I had the most relaxing weekend ever and I barely looked at my phone to get messages, let alone to check the Lotto numbers. All that time I was chilling out in Kerry and I had no idea that I had a ticket worth a quarter of a million euro in my handbag. It wasn’t until I got home that I found out. I read that the winning ticket was sold in Kerry and I had to do a double take to tell myself, ‘hang-on, I bought a ticket in Kerry’ – It was just incredible,” she said.

The winning Lotto Plus 2 winning ticket was purchased on Saturday 12th October at Garvey’s Supervalu in Tralee.

The woman admitted that while her family have been quietly celebrating for the past week, the reality of the size of their Lotto prize has yet to sink in.

“It’s been a mad house for the past week and I don’t think that we’ve really come to terms with it yet. We are a hard-working family so we won’t be getting carried away with it. What this win does mean is that it puts us into a very good position to provide the very best for our family with education costs and whatnot. We won’t rush into any mad spending until we get a proper plan in place for everybody,” she added.