{"id":270501,"date":"2026-01-06T15:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T15:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/270501\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T15:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T15:36:08","slug":"irish-man-20-who-died-on-alps-skiing-trip-is-named-locally-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/270501\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish man (20) who died on Alps skiing trip is named locally \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Foreign Affairs<\/a> is providing consular assistance to the family of a young Irish man who took ill and died<\/a> while on a skiing trip with a group of friends in France at the weekend.<\/p>\n

The young man has been named locally in Cork as Cian O\u2019Brien (20) from Gleann na R\u00ed in Tower near Blarney and he died after taking ill on Sunday night at the French ski resort of Alpe d\u2019Huez.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Brien, who was working as an electrical apprentice with a pharmaceutical company in Cork, was with a group of friends who had gone to France with the Cork Snow Sports Society.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understood Mr O\u2019Brien had been socialising with his friends on Sunday night and went to bed, but his roommates were unable to rouse him on Monday morning and raised the alarm.<\/p>\n

The emergency services were alerted but they were unable to resuscitate him and he was pronounced dead by a local doctor. A postmortem is scheduled for later in the week.<\/p>\n

Some 350 young people from Cork had gone to France with the society, which was formed in University College Cork some years ago but is not an officially funded college society.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understood Mr O\u2019Brien\u2019s parents, Paul and Sabrina, who also have an older daughter, Lauren, had just returned to Cork from a holiday in Spain when they learned of the tragedy. <\/p>\n

The Department of Foreign Affairs is assisting the family, and it\u2019s understood the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust is also assisting the family as they seek to have their son\u2019s remains brought home.<\/p>\n

Local Fine Gael councillor Damian Boylan said the community in Tower and Blarney were shocked at the news as the family were well known through their involvement in Blarney United soccer club.<\/p>\n

Cian\u2019s father had coached at the soccer club while Cian, who went to school at Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal in Blarney, had played with the club as well as with Blarney GAA club.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was shocked at the news \u2013 Cian was well known and well liked and the family would have been very involved with Blarney United so there\u2019s a real sadness about the place today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s every parent\u2019s worst nightmare for something like this to happen, and away from home and all,\u201d Cllr Boylan said. \u201cIt is so sad. My deepest sympathies are with his family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another person involved with Blarney United described him \u201cas a lovely young fellow \u2013 he was just a really nice kid \u2013 and this is going to hit his buddies hard. He was so popular.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone who was in Cian\u2019s year in school in Blarney are devastated. It\u2019s shocking, it\u2019s awful and all the pals are just devastated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Foreign Affairs is providing consular assistance to the family of a young Irish man who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1877,8104,18,13,14,2220,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-270501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cork","11":"tag-department-of-foreign-affairs","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-france","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115848897315791592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}