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A woman in her 20s has been arrested by gardaí who are investigating alleged deception against UCD. The student is involved in a high-profile case encompassing allegations of alleged mistreatment of a victim which had been raised in Dáil Éireann and received widespread public attention.
The woman is being detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act at a south Dublin garda station and can be questioned for up to 24 hours, RTÉ News reports. The woman is being questioned in relation to the supply of alleged fraudulent documentation to UCD.
The case was raised in the Dáil by Ruth Coppinger TD earlier this year who said that a student had been raped in 2023, became pregnant and had an abortion, and therefore “had to miss some of her medical exams”.
While Deputy Coppinger said that the student hadn’t been able to continue her medical degree since 2023, as UCD has blocked her from doing so”, Justice Marguerite Bolger ruled in the High Court that UCD Medical School “responded fairly and sympathetically and immediately recognised the impact that those events had on her ability to attend or pass her May 2023 exams.”
Yesterday, The Court of Appeal reserved judgment in a challenge by the medical student against the High Court’s ruling which rejected her claim that UCD failed to make sufficient allowances for her studies after she alleged she was raped by a fellow student, and that an image of her bruised and unconscious body was shared with students and staff at the university in April 2025.
The student alleges that following the rape, she did not succeed in, or was unable to sit, all of her second-year modules for medicine and that UCD’s requirement that she remediate six incomplete modules, meant the university had failed to make reasonable allowances after the alleged assault and abortion, thereby forcing her to choose between continuing her studies and accessing healthcare.
But Ms Justice Bolger ruled that the university efforts to assist the medical student complete the failed modules were “entirely lawful and proper”, saying she did not “consider that the university could, or should, have addressed the plaintiff’s situation in any way other than as they did. They have obligations about the plaintiff’s workload and the quality and integrity of her degree”.
Gardaí say investigations are continuing.
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