Rowing Ireland has acknowledged that it is not acceptable that some of its elite athletes reported negative experiences during its high-performance programme .
As RTÉ News and The Irish Times report, Rowing Ireland attributed one possible cause as being the “unanticipated speed” at which elite success occurred at international level in Irish rowing, along with the impact of Covid restrictions around the Tokyo Olympics.
The national representative body was before this week’s Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport chaired by Labour TD Alan Kelly.
It was responding to claims by a number of rowing athletes about a ‘toxic’ atmosphere within the high performance programme, as reported in an investigative series by Paul Kimmage published last November by The Sunday Independent.
Rowing Ireland’s chief executive Michelle Carpenter was not present, and none of those at the hearing had held senior operational roles during the period in question.
As The Sunday Independent reported last week, psychologist Dr Paul Gaffney told a private hearing of the Oireachtas committee that in 2024, he was treating 12 current and former athletes from the sport’s high-performance programme.
Former world champion and Olympian Sanita Puspure and international rower Monika Dukarska also outlined to the committee the culture within the programme under the sport’s former performance director, Antonio Maurogiovanni.
Dr Una May, chief executive of the overall governing body for sport, Sport Ireland, told the committee that “Sport Ireland responded immediately, appropriately and promptly to any welfare concerns that were raised with us regarding rowing”.
Dr May said there have been issues in Rowing Ireland since 2021, which were addressed through available mechanisms, including direct dialogue with the leadership in rowing.
She said that Rowing Ireland did not engage in an independent culture review after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in spite of Sport Ireland’s expectations
Dr May said Sport Ireland used future funding for Rowing Ireland as a “specific lever” in its efforts to resolve the issue.
Read the Sunday Independent chronology here, read The Irish Times here and RTÉ News reports here
