There have been renewed calls to progress legislation which specifically outlaws spiking.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Drivetime, MEP Regina Doherty said the current laws in this space are outdated.

“The problem is that it isn’t explicit and we have a very old, outdated law called a non-fatal offences act against a person and there is a charge in there called poisoning but it’s very, very rarely used and it’s very, very difficult to prosecute,” she said.

The standalone offence would cover the administering, the injecting of a substance without a person’s consent in order to sedate them, harm them or sexually assault them.

It would carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Figures last month revealed that an alleged spiking incident is being reported to gardaí on average once every six days.

A total of 339 cases of a person’s drink being spiked or an individual being unknowingly injected with a drug were reported between January 2021 and December last year.

This amounts to an average of one incident every six days during the five-year period, or an average of 67 cases per year during this time.

Between 2017 and 2020, an average of 19 cases per year were reported to gardaí.

The Sexual Violence Centre in Cork last month warned about the prominence and influence of toxic masculinity and how it is leading to incidents of spiking.

A bill was first brought forward three years ago, which is still waiting to be debated in the Dáil.

Ms Doherty said that bill passed all stages of the Seanad in 2023 with the support of the then-minister for health Simon Harris.

It was then to go to the Dáil but it since has not moved any further.

Ms Doherty said she does not know what caused the barrier.

“It probably is that people are just busy … we had an election in the middle of all of that and then obviously bills that are not passed all stages fall,” she said.

Ms Doherty said she has written to the Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan to “put pressure on” to incorporate the bill either into a criminal justice bill that is already scheduled or for him to sponsor it and bring it forward in Government time.

“This is a serious crime and that’s what I’m really concerned about”

“it is not just the people who are reporting and those numbers are growing, but the thousands of people who are not reporting because it is so difficult to get prosecution under the outdated act,” she said.