Newcomer part of €8.5m Lotto syndicate
Syndicate winners: (Back row left to right) Olive Tully, John Kennedy, Mary Goulding, Ger Murphy and Clare Foye; (Front row L to R) Barry Fitzgerald, Ronan Carroll and Alex Burke
Tuesday November 03 2009
'It is a nice amount in that it helps everyone out from a financial point of view'
IT took just one month in his new job for Barry Fitzgerald to walk away with a cheque for more than €426,000.
The 26-year-old thought the computers in his office had crashed when he walked into work yesterday morning to find everyone standing around.
However, it soon became clear that he and his 19 colleagues were part of the luckiest lottery syndicate of the weekend and had just won an €8,533,395 jackpot, the result of six rolled-over draws.
Every single staff member of KennCo Underwriting, an insurance brokers from Rathfarnham in south Dublin, collected cheques from the National Lottery yesterday after one of their €20 quick pick tickets contained the winning numbers from Saturday's draw.
The office is located over the shop that sold the winning ticket. However, it was a victory which came close to never happening as the syndicate only plays sporadically.
"It is very much an ad-hoc syndicate, we only do it when the Lotto is big," Olive Tully, who organises the tickets, said. "I will send an email around and anybody who wants to do it just throws €2 onto my desk and their name on a list.
"It's called the 'KennCo ad hoc' syndicate," said Olive. "I would send an email around when it got to €5m-plus. If it was €2m we wouldn't do it because there was too much hassle."
It was Olive and her colleague Mary Goulding who initially found out about their success on Sunday and rapidly started ringing colleagues, although it took until yesterday morning for a few to find out.
"My phone was off all day yesterday and I came into work and didn't believe it. They were all standing around and then they told me what it was. I went into shock for about half an hour -- I still am," said Barry, who just joined the company a month ago after leaving Axa insurance.
Sneak
Accountant Ronan Carroll (31) said he was trying to sneak into work after running late to find "everyone standing around and staring at the door".
"They said we won 426 and I thought it was going to be €426 each, but then they said it was €426,000," he said.
Champagne was corked in National Lottery headquarters yesterday afternoon when the 20 winners arrived to collect their cheques with most of them committing their newly-found funds to new or existing homes.
John Kennedy, the managing director of the company, said he "sincerely hoped" that staff would remain with the company following the win.
"We always have a joke that says I won't do it [play the lottery] because I don't want any of them to win in case they all leave me," he said.
"It is a nice amount in that it helps everyone out from a financial point of view. And of course they all love it [working] anyway."
The main prize has been rolling since October 10 and totalled over €8.5m.
One of the winners, claims manager Alex Burke, said he had a premonition that something was coming before he was called. "My wife has just had a baby and is due to be back at work in January. I had a funny inclination that we were going to come into money. I didn't know when," he said.
Of the 20 winners, 11 chose to go public -- Ger Murphy, Clare Foye, Olive Tully, Barry Fitzgerald, Amy Anderson, Alex Burke, Elena Montoya, Ronan Carroll, Nicola Moore, Mary Goulding and John Kennedy.
- Shane Hickey
Irish Independent
