Dolores McNamara

Dolores McNamara, a part-time cleaner and mother of six from Garryowen in Limerick city, won more than €115 million in the EuroMillions draw of Friday 29 July 2005 — at the time the largest lottery prize ever won in Europe, and still the largest ever won by an individual in Ireland. She had bought a €2 quick-pick ticket at her local shop, G O Stores in Garryowen; she said afterwards that she had gone in intending to buy Irish Lotto lines and took a EuroMillions ticket when the shop assistant asked, the first she had ever bought. After several days in which media waited at National Lottery headquarters on Dublin's Abbey Street, she collected the cheque there on 4 August 2005. She posed for photographs but answered no questions, leaving her solicitor, David Sweeney of Sweeney McGann, to issue a statement saying it was "her sincere desire that she and her family will return to normality as soon as possible." She bought Lough Derg Hall on 38 acres near Killaloe, Co Clare, for €1.7 million, homes for her six children, and about seven years later Tinarana House, a 19th-century mansion on 244 acres, for more than €3 million.

Her husband, Adrian McNamara, died on 22 April 2021 at their son Lee's home in Killaloe, Co Clare, survived by his wife, six children and nine grandchildren. An Irish Times retrospective published on 18 June 2025, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the win, reported that the family had spent about €5 million buying more than 100 houses in Detroit between 2012 and 2014 — paying roughly $50,000 each, with many later listed at an average asking price of about $17,000 — and had paid for round-the-clock security after kidnap threats.