![\"Garda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784903889_901_2_WhatsApp-Image-2026-06-27-at-174003jpeg.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOne woman collapsed while drinking water earlier this month<\/p>\n
13:00, 24 Jul 2026Updated 13:08, 24 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed in Cork city centre (stock)(Image: CorkBeo\/Thomas Lawrance)<\/p>\n
A well-known Cork solicitor has urged people to stay safe on nights out in the city – after his friend’s daughter collapsed while on a night out in Cork city centre earlier this month.<\/p>\n
The woman had been drinking water while celebrating a cousin’s engagement when she collapsed in the pub, before being rushed to the Mercy hospital<\/a>. After posting about the incident on social media, solicitor Patrick Horan received a call a few days later – and the woman on the other end of the phone alerted him to four other spiking cases in Cork recently, while another woman told him about her own similar experience.<\/p>\n Mr Horan told Today with David McCullagh on RT\u00c9 Radio One: “[The victim] was out on a Saturday night, July 4-5, in a pub in Cork city. It’s a very respectable place. It’s not a rough joint or anything like that. She was there celebrating the engagement party of a cousin, and at a certain point she just collapsed. She doesn’t recall collapsing – just waking up in the back of an ambulance.<\/p>\n “She drinks very little, works very hard and she’d never take sutbstances, so it was very frightening. She was taken, thankfully, to the Mercy hospital in Cork and they looked after her really, really well.”<\/p>\n He added: “It appears there was a doctor in the pub who recognised something was not right and to call an ambulance.”<\/p>\n Of his social media post after the incident, Mr Horan explained: “I posted because I’m the father of a daughter, I’ve got nieces, I’ve got friends who a woman, obviously, and you kind of have to accept that there are men out there behaving in this way and they are criminals. That’s the long and the short of it.”<\/p>\n He said that he then learned about the related incidents, in which women passed out after drinking in Cork<\/a> pubs.<\/p>\n The Cork Sexual Violence Centre<\/a> launched a campaign last month to make spiking the subject of a new, standalone legislation. The National Women’s Council’s annual general meeting sought the council’s support, and the motion was passed.<\/p>\n Spiking, by both injection or substance, is a notable offence by the Non-Fatal Against the Persons Act 1997, but stronger laws are needed to decrease the number of incidents, RSVP Live<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n 2FM presenter Lottie Ryan read about the scary incident on air, and was then prompted to speak about her own spiking incident after a night out in Dublin City Centre a few years ago.<\/p>\n Speaking about the incident, Lottie said: “I think first of all, it is mad how quickly, when we are talking about this subject, that the advice generally becomes ‘watch your drink,’ ‘don’t leave your friends’, ‘cover your glass’. All very sensible advice, but the conversation immediately then shifts onto the potential victims and what they should do, rather than why perpetrators believe that they can get away with it.”<\/p>\n She continued: “It’s also important not to lose sight of who is responsible, and the person who chose to put something into somebody else’s drink is the problem.”<\/p>\n Giving a firsthand experience of what she felt, she said: “It was as if the room and the people were completely separate from what I was. It was the most bizarre out-of-body experience. We were incredibly lucky in the sense that maybe I was being particularly vigilant because my younger sister was with me, but I immediately knew something was not right.<\/p>\n “It was only one drink, I needed to get her home. We left. We were clinging to the walls outside, we were so lucky that an unbelievable taxi man got us home. But we didn’t tell anyone, didn’t tell anyone the next day, because we were embarrassed, I guess, embarrassed of ‘what are people going to say?'”<\/p>\n She finished by stating: “I think embarrassment and shame need to go out the window, and it’s something that we all need to be really, really conscious and aware of.”<\/p>\n If you have been affected by this story you can contact the Sexual Violence Centre in Cork on 1800 496 496 or text 087 1533 393. You can also email them at info@sexualviolence.ie or check out their website<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n