{"id":598513,"date":"2026-08-19T22:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T22:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/598513\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T22:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T22:16:09","slug":"alleged-spiking-incidents-reported-once-every-six-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/598513\/","title":{"rendered":"Alleged spiking incidents reported once every six days"},"content":{"rendered":"

An alleged spiking incident is being reported to garda\u00ed on average once every six days, new figures show.<\/p>\n

A total of 339 cases of a person’s drink being spiked or an individual being unknowingly injected with a drug were reported between January 2021 and December last year.<\/p>\n

Official figures provided to Sinn F\u00e9in TD Mark Ward showed that 61 cases were reported in 2021, 107 in 2022, 52 in 2023, 61 in 2024 and 58 in 2025.<\/p>\n

This amounts to an average of one incident every six days during the five-year period, or an average of 67 cases per year during this time.<\/p>\n

Between 2017 and 2020, an average of 19 cases per year were reported to garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

The new figures come after victim support groups raised fresh concerns over the risk of spiking in Ireland.<\/a><\/p>\n

In a statement this evening, Mr Ward said: “It is important to note that these figures are only the ones that have been reported. Garda\u00ed and other sexual violence support groups fear that many incidents go unreported.<\/p>\n

“The Sexual Violence Centre in Cork have said that spiking is endemic in society, that the figures reported are ‘only the tip of the iceberg’ and that there is a stigma attached to reporting.<\/p>\n

“The Sexual Assault Treatment Unit report that 19% of people who attended their units in 2025 said they were concerned that spiking was involved.<\/p>\n

“This cannot become the new norm.”<\/p>\n

Mr Ward added he believes in his view new laws specifically focused on spiking may be needed to address the situation.<\/p>\n

“Spiking can be extremely distressing for people, and the lack of a clear route to toxicology testing is also raised as an obstacle.<\/p>\n

“At the moment there is no standalone legislation for spiking offences and none of the reports since 2022 have resulted in a prosecution under the legislation that does include spiking.<\/p>\n

“Britain introduced standalone legislation earlier this year; this is something to pay close attention to.<\/p>\n

“We need to see this being taken seriously by the Government,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An alleged spiking incident is being reported to garda\u00ed on average once every six days, new figures show.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-598513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598513","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=598513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}