Just what exactly are they? Do they still exist? Looking for answers, NewsFour spoke to Karen Jones of Gibney Communications, the company responsible for the marketing of Prize Bonds.
Bonds are sold at a price of €6.25 each but a minimum of four must be purchased at any time. There are three ways to purchase bonds; visit www.statesavings.ie, call 1850 30 50 60 or pop into your nearest post office.
A computerised random draw is made every Friday morning with the winners listed online from 12.30pm. You can also find out the top six winning bonds from any post office branch.
Over 8,500 prizes are awarded in each weekly draw. On the last Friday of every month, one lucky bond-holder wins €1 million, with a top prize of €20,000 issued on all other weeks. Each draw, five winners receive €1000, 500 are awarded €100 and 8,000 receive €50. The main attraction of prize bonds is that, unlike lottery numbers, bonds never expire and thus can win multiple times. Another draw is the option to cash in your bonds for their initial value at any time.
Prize bonds have been in Ireland for over half a century, having been first introduced under the 1956 Finance Act. All money received goes to the National Treasury Management Agency, a state body which manages the country’s national debt. Essentially, when you purchase a bond, you’re loaning the government money.
Despite recent economic woes, prize bonds have seen an upsurge in sales with €399 million worth of bonds sold in 2010. There are approximately 258 million individual bonds currently in existence, with a staggeringly high value of €1.6 billion.
Many bond-holders are unaware of being winners, with approximately €2 million worth of prizes remaining unclaimed. If you have some stashed away that you’ve forgotten about, you may want to dig them out and visit www.statesavings.ie to see if a windfall awaits you.
By Eric Hillis
