{"id":271280,"date":"2026-01-07T01:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T01:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/271280\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T01:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T01:15:07","slug":"tributes-paid-to-man-20-who-died-while-on-skiing-holiday-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/271280\/","title":{"rendered":"Tributes paid to man, 20, who died while on skiing holiday in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

A community has rallied behind the family of a young Cork man<\/strong> who lost his life<\/strong> in France last weekend.<\/p>\n

Cian O\u2019Brien<\/strong>, 20, from Gleann na R\u00ed, Tower, Co Cork, lost his life while on a skiing trip to the French Alps at the weekend. It is understood he suffered a medical emergency.<\/p>\n

It is understood that his friends alerted emergency services after finding him unresponsive. Despite the best efforts of first responders, Mr O’Brien was tragically pronounced dead by a local doctor on Monday January 5th.<\/p>\n

Paying tribute, his former GAA coach at Blarney GAA, Richard O\u2019Driscoll, said: “I had the pleasure of coaching Cian at u15\/16 at Blarney Gaa. Cian loved being around his teammates no matter the result and developed great friendships through being involved and his loveable personality.”<\/p>\n

Another neighbour wrote: “Paul, we are so very sorry to hear about Cian\u2019s passing. We remember him as such a lovely, gentle lad when he worked with you on our house last year.<\/p>\n

“Our hearts go out to you and your family during this terribly sad and difficult time.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The Department of Foreign Affairs have confirmed that they are providing consular assistance to the family.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: “The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is aware of this case and is providing consular assistance.”<\/p>\n

It is understood that Mr O’Brien’s family are organising the repatriation of his body to Ireland, with the support of Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust, and funeral details will be announced later.<\/p>\n

He is survived by his parents Paul and Sabrina, and sister Lauren. No funeral arrangements have been made as yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A community has rallied behind the family of a young Cork man who lost his life in France…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-271280","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-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271280","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=271280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}