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A few weeks ago this column told you about findings from the Rotunda Sexual Assault Treatment Unit (SATU) showing that women were arriving at the Dublin hospital with alcohol levels so high that the only other place such levels were ever seen was in the coroner's court.

This evidence was subsequently presented by Dr Mary Holohan, director of the unit, to a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, which is investigating the incidence of alcohol-related problems turning up in accident and emergency departments. She told them that 60 per cent of the women turning up at the unit have been drinking alcohol. Many needed to believe that their drinks were "spiked", when actually they had just been drinking too much.