A frantic search for a winning Lotto ticket lodged with and then apparently mislaid at a Bank of Ireland branch in Dublin is over.
The ticket, worth more than €600,000, was lodged at its branch in Baggot Street by two members of a winning syndicate on December 28th but when they went to collect it and take it to Lotto headquarters on January 4th, it could not be found.
The bank decided to honour the value of the ticket and paid out €606,000 (£478,000) to the syndicate from the Irish League of Credit Unions. In the background, however, the search for the valuable slip of paper continued.
It emerged yesterday that the ticket had finally turned up on Monday, albeit by a circuitous route. It had been posted out by the bank to one of the winning syndicate.
It appears the ticket was in a used envelope, addressed to one of the syndicate members, when it was lodged in the bank and somehow it ended up in the bank's outgoing mail.
It was delivered to the addressee, a member of the syndicate, in recent days and the recipient returned it to the bank on Monday.
Ms Ann Matthews of the bank's public affairs department conceded there was relief all round at the find. "Obviously we were delighted but we were always confident that we would find it and that it would turn up," she said.
The syndicate from the Irish League of Credit Unions had won a third share in the St Stephen's Day Lotto jackpot.
