Gardaí are appealing for witnesses to a serious assault in Cork in which a man was blinded in one eye.

A man bought a tank of nitrogen over the counter from an industrial gas supplier and used it in a homemade suicide kit, an inquest heard yesterday.

A 21-year old man co-accused of beating a man, who later died, into a coma admitted to gardaí that himself and his friend "just beat him to death".