{"id":235658,"date":"2026-01-09T07:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/235658\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T07:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:14:17","slug":"over-e71k-raised-to-help-family-of-20-year-old-cian-who-died-on-a-skiing-trip-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/235658\/","title":{"rendered":"Over \u20ac71k raised to help family of 20-year-old Cian who died on a skiing trip in France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"contextmenu internal_Body1st\">Over \u20ac71,000 was raised in less than a day to assist the family of the 20-year-old Cork man who died after taking ill while on a skiing trip in a French resort at the weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Cian O\u2019Brien from Tower, near Blarney, was an electrical apprentice at a pharmaceutical company in Cork.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">He travelled to France with a local skiing and snowboarding club and was among a group of over 300 people on the trip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Mr O\u2019Brien went out with members of the group on Sunday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The alarm was raised on Monday morning when friends were unable to wake him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">In spite of the efforts of paramedics, he was pronounced dead at the scene by a local GP. A postmortem examination is set to take place following the death at the ski resort of Alpe d\u2019Huez.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">A <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gofundme.com\/f\/donate-in-memory-of-cian-o-brien\">GoFundMe page<\/a> was set up with the agreement of the family of the deceased. The page is raising funds to help the family to pay for the costs associated with \u201cbringing him [Cian] home and laying him to rest\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Mr O\u2019Brien was a former player with both Blarney Football Club and Blarney GAA club, and well regarded in the local area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Paying tribute, his former GAA coach at Blarney GAA Richard O\u2019Driscoll said: \u201cI had the pleasure of coaching Cian at U15\/16 at Blarney GAA.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cCian loved being around his teammates no matter the result, and developed great friendships through being involved and his loveable personality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Another neighbour wrote: \u201cPaul, we are so very sorry to hear about Cian\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cWe remember him as such a lovely, gentle lad when he worked with you on our house last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cOur hearts go out to you and your family during this terribly sad and difficult time.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The Department of Foreign Affairs have confirmed they are providing consular assistance to the family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">A spokesperson for the department said: \u201cThe Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is aware of this case and is providing consular assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">It is understood that Mr O\u2019Brien\u2019s family are organising the repatriation of his body to Ireland, with the support of Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">He is survived by his parents Paul and Sabrina, and sister Lauren.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">No funeral arrangements have been made as yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over \u20ac71,000 was raised in less than a day to assist the family of the 20-year-old Cork man&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,34646,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-235658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-news","tag-gofundme","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}