When the then 45-year-old Dolores McNamara arrived at the National Lottery HQ on Dublin’s Abbey St in early August 2005 she was like a rabbit in the headlights.
Increasingly impatient and bored journalists had been standing outside the building for three days waiting for the person who had just scooped the then largest ever EuroMillions jackpot of €115 million, and they scrambled to catch her eye.
While the Limerick woman, who had previously had a part-time job as a cleaner, was willing to pose for pictures on her big day out, she did not answer any questions.
Instead, she left that to her solicitor.
He told reporters that his client, who had moved in a heartbeat from being of very modest means to being one of the country’s richest people, was adamant she and her family would keep their feet “firmly on the ground”.
He also said she was hoping for a “sense of closure” after all the attention her enormous win had attracted died down.
It was wishful thinking. Over the last 20 years the media and the country has retained an endless fascination with the reclusive Ms McNamara. Every misstep and news morsel has been devoured by a public who have an endless fascination with those who win life-changing sums of money.
The unwanted attention started even before Ms McNamara picked up her novelty cheque – a blurry picture taken of her celebrating her win in Garryowen’s Track pub sold by a local to two newspapers for a reported €17,000.
Ms McNamara, in the first instance, did what most people would do and bought an expansive home: Lough Derg Hall on 38 acres outside the village of Killaloe, Co Clare. It cost her €1.7 million.
She also bought her six children homes in the area and some seven years after her win, spent more than €3 million on Tinarana House, a 19th-century Victorian mansion on 244 acres overlooking Lough Derg that was previously owned by former Co Clare GP Paschal Carmody.
Along with the property investments, she also had to invest heavily in round-the-clock security for herself, her husband and all their children as they had to contend with multiple kidnap threats.
At one point more than 10 years ago, one of her children was forced to leave his Limerick home after gardaí passed information to him that a local gang might be planning to abduct and hold him for ransom.
An Post was forced to deny in the weeks after Ms McNamara’s win became public that it had deployed an extra van to deal with the volume of begging letters that came her way. But it is beyond doubt that she had to deal with a huge volume coming from across Europe.
The family also made a widely publicised and perhaps unwise investment in homes in the run-down US city of Detroit, Michigan, spending about €5 million on more than 100 homes between 2012 and 2014.
They appear to have suffered heavy losses on their investment, with many of the homes subsequently listed for forfeiture to Wayne County treasury authorities. .
The Irish Times reported that the McNamaras had paid an average of about $50,000 for each house, with a large number put up for sale years later with an average asking price of $17,000.
