<\/p>\n
Judge Eoin Garavan.<\/p>\n
A victim of ‘toxic work environment’ during Covid outbreak<\/p>\n
\n Published:
\n Wed 15 Oct 2025, 12:58 PM\n <\/p>\n
A codeine-addicted nurse stole prescription books from Mayo University Hospital in Castlebar and passed off forged prescriptions at pharmacies in seven different towns.<\/p>\n
Sinead Donohoe, aged 42, of Scrigg, Ballyhaunis, admitted the theft and forgery offences when she appeared before a sitting of Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court.<\/p>\n
There were 112 counts in the original indictment with the defendant pleading guilty to two sample charges of theft and four of forgery.<\/p>\n
The theft of the prescription books from Mayo University Hospital took place on dates unknown between September 1, 2019, and February 19, 2021.<\/p>\n
On May 1, 2020, the defendant entered McSharry\u2019s Pharmacy, Knock Road, Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, with a forged prescription.<\/p>\n
She committed the same offence on June 22, 2020, at Allcare Pharmacy, Barrack Street, Castlerea.<\/p>\n
On September 14, 2020, Donohoe produced a forged prescription at Colleran\u2019s Pharmacy, Bridge Street, Ballyhaunis.<\/p>\n
The fourth forgery offence occurred at Boots, Hopkins’ Road, Castlebar, on January 20, 2021.<\/p>\n
Garda Tyrone Tobin told the court that garda\u00ed in Castlerea were alerted to suspicious activity by a pharmacist in the town.<\/p>\n
McSharry\u2019s Pharmacy reported that the amount of Solpadol requested on a prescription that was handed in was too high in quantity to be prescribed to any patient. Donohoe had handed in the prescription.<\/p>\n
Three days later on February 15, 2021, garda\u00ed attended the pharmacy and received 10 copies of the prescriptions that were in the defendant’s name.<\/p>\n
The prescriptions were on Mayo University Hospital paper. Three other pharmacies in Castlerea confirmed that they had received similar prescriptions.<\/p>\n
On February 17, 2021, Mayo University Hospital was contacted. It confirmed that Donohoe was a nurse in the hospital\u2019s intensive care unit.<\/p>\n
The defendant’s home was searched on February 19, 2021. She handed over three prescription books that were marked as property of Mayo University Hospital.<\/p>\n
The woman admitted taking the books without permission and said she had forged prescriptions before tendering them in various pharmacies in counties Mayo and Roscommon.<\/p>\n
During the course of the investigation, garda\u00ed visited pharmacies in Castlerea, Ballaghaderreen, Ballyhaunis, Knock, Claremorris, Kiltimagh and Castlebar and received copies of forged prescriptions in the name of Donohoe.<\/p>\n
In total, 109 forged prescriptions using the stolen books were recovered. The hospital confirmed that Donohoe did not have permission to remove the books.<\/p>\n
When interviewed by garda\u00ed, the defendant made full admissions and was co-operative.<\/p>\n
The court heard that she had made up all of the doctor\u2019s names and registration numbers that she had written on the prescriptions. None of them were real doctors.<\/p>\n
The nurse told officers that she had been suffering stress in the workplace and was in pain as a result of endometriosis.<\/p>\n
Donohoe said she began self-prescribing Solpadol and became addicted to the medication.<\/p>\n
The prescriptions were solely for herself. The offending took place over a 19-month period.<\/p>\n
Judge Eoin Garavan said it was \u201cremarkable\u201d that there were no fail-safes in place or red flags raised to prevent prescriptions being given out under the name of a fake doctor.<\/p>\n
Donohoe, a married mother-of-two, has no previous convictions. She is currently suspended from her position as an ICU nurse.<\/p>\n
Senior counsel Bernard Madden said his client had been impacted by a \u201ctoxic workplace environment\u201d that existed during the Covid-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n
Judge Garavan agreed that the defendant was \u201canother indirect victim of Covid.”<\/p>\n
He said while her offending began before the pandemic, he believed Covid-19 played a role in the intensification of her crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a different type of victim of Covid,\u201d said the judge. \u201cOn the front-line struggling to cope,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Judge Garavan said while Donohoe abused her position as a nurse to feed her addiction, her feelings of shame were \u201cabsolutely genuine”.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think she will ever forgive herself,\u201d he commented.<\/p>\n
The judge said the \u201conly person she damaged was herself.”<\/p>\n
He imposed a 16-month suspended prison sentence.<\/p>\n
(Funded under the Courts Reporting Scheme).<\/p>\n
\n Published:
\n Wed 15 Oct 2025, 12:58 PM\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judge Eoin Garavan. A victim of ‘toxic work environment’ during Covid outbreak Published: Wed 15 Oct 2025, 12:58…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163,85,46,482],"class_list":{"0":"post-76696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}