'Drink coma' parents shun court date and fly home from Portugal

Published on Tuesday 6 May 2008 22:06

THE British couple who allegedly passed out after drinking too much on holiday and had their three children taken into care have left Portugal.

Eamon and Antoinette McGuckin had originally volunteered to attend a court in Portugal yesterday afternoon to explain how they both collapsed after a family night out in the golfing resort of Vilamoura.

However, the Foreign Office confirmed they left the country instead. It is thought they went back to the family home in Maghera, Londonderry, in Northern Ireland.

Witnesses told Portuguese police that Mr McGuckin, 34, a former manager with the Ulster Bank and now a mortgage adviser, had been taken to hospital for emergency treatment along with his wife, while their three children, aged one, two and six, were put into protective care.

Mr McGuckin is alleged to have collapsed on a sofa in the reception area of the three-star Mourabel Hotel on Friday night. His 32-year-old wife is said to have staggered into the bar with her children before passing out as well.

But Mrs McGuckin has since insisted that she had only three lagers. She told friends the reaction could have been because the couple had been very tired after waking at 4am to fly to Portugal, and they had been affected by the heat. She has asked for blood-test results to establish what caused her to collapse on the first night of their holiday.

The incident happened only 45 miles from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine McCann went missing from her family's holiday apartment a year ago while her parents dined nearby.

The allegations against the McGuckins have served to highlight concerns in the Algarve that a growing number of British parents are drinking while on holiday with their children.

Their case received massive media coverage in Portugal and has been held up as an example of British holidaymakers drinking too much and putting their children at risk. A source at the country's National Institute of Emergency Medicine told the newspaper Correio Da Manha that transporting tourists to hospital in an alcoholic coma "is a normal situation".

Jorge Craveiro, a retired restaurant owner, told Diario de Noticias: "There are couples who walk out drunk after dinner. Quite often, it's the children who have to help them to reach their apartments, as the parents aren't in a state to do it alone."

Dr Luis Villas-Boas, director of the home where the McGuckin children were taken, said: "I've followed this incident with pitiful feelings. I don't think they (the parents] should be prosecuted but just blamed and given words of reprimand.

"I was sympathetic to the parents and I understood they felt ashamed, although I did blame them for what happened."

A councillor who knows the couple from their home town insists Mrs McGuckin had been merely unwell.

Kate Lagan, an SDLP councillor for Magherafelt, said she could not understand why the Portuguese authorities took the action they did.

She said: "It is fairly obvious there is something very strange about this – for example, how could you possibly go from escorting three children from a bar to being completely comatose in a hotel as suddenly as that?"

One neighbour, who didn't want to be named, said they believed the couple were being "made an example of".

Couple may face quiz

EAMON and Antoinette McGuckin may face a grilling by social services now they have left Portugal. Judicial sources say it is unlikely the couple will be prosecuted in the Algarve. However, police, hospital and social services reports could be sent to UK authorities.

Police in Vilamoura said they were called as the children were crying and couldn't wake their parents. Portuguese police officers issued a summons requiring them to appear before a judge at the Family and Children Court in nearby Faro but the Foreign Office says their presence was not obligatory.