CORK - A well-known Cork solicitor has issued an urgent warning about drink spiking in the city after his friend's daughter collapsed during a night out. He revealed at least four other similar cases have occurred recently.
Patrick Horan, speaking on RTÉ Radio One's Today with David McCullagh, described the incident involving a young woman at a "very respectable" Cork city pub on the night of 4-5 July 2026:
"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."
The woman, who drinks very little and does not take substances, was rushed to Mercy University Hospital where staff "looked after her really, really well." A doctor in the pub had recognised something was wrong and called an ambulance.
The Scale of the Problem
After posting about the incident on social media, Horan received a call revealing four other spiking cases in Cork recently, plus another woman sharing her own similar experience.
Horan, a father and uncle to young women, said: "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."
Campaign for Stronger Laws
The Cork Sexual Violence Centre launched a campaign last month to make spiking a standalone offence under new legislation. While spiking by injection or substance is currently an offence under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, campaigners say stronger laws are needed to deter perpetrators.
The National Women's Council passed a motion supporting the campaign at its annual general meeting.
Lottie Ryan Speaks Out
2FM presenter Lottie Ryan discussed the issue on air and shared her own spiking experience from a night out in Dublin city centre a few years ago:
"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... It was only one drink. I immediately knew something was not right."
She and her younger sister "were clinging to the walls outside" but an "unbelievable taxi man" got them home safely. They told no one the next day - "because we were embarrassed, I guess, embarrassed of 'what are people going to say?'"
Ryan challenged the victim-blaming narrative: "It's mad how quickly the advice becomes 'watch your drink,' 'don't leave your friends,' 'cover your glass'... The conversation immediately shifts onto the potential victims and what they should do, rather than why perpetrators believe that they can get away with it."
She added: "The person who chose to put something into somebody else's drink is the problem... 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."