IT’S THE STUFF that nightmares are made of.

A family who scooped €500,000 on the Euromillions have spoken about how an error from the husband almost cost them their prize.

Collecting their prize from the National Lottery headquarters today, the family – who are remaining anonymous – explained that it was the wife’s intuition that saved them.

“My husband was on the computer on Tuesday night and I asked him to look up the results of the EuroMillions draw,” she explained.

Moments later, I saw him crumple up the ticket as he informed me that I was out of luck.

Something didn’t seem quite right though, and later that night she found herself rifling through the rubbish to look for the ticket.

“For some reason I questioned whether or not my husband had also checked the EuroMillions Plus numbers,” she said.

When he finally got around to checking the numbers, there was a stunned silence in the room and I knew something had happened. It just goes to show that you have to check your lottery tickets very carefully before throwing them away.

The ticket was bought for the prize draw on Tuesday 10 May, and was sold at Centra in Doneraile in Cork.

This follows a situation earlier in the week where a Dublin man  found a €500,000 ticket after being asked to clean up by his wife.

Tonight’s EuroMillions jackpot is an estimated €15 million.

Read: Man finds €500,000 Euromillions ticket while cleaning

Also: Mystery as €8.2m Lotto jackpot winner has yet to be paid