Amanda Bennett will spearhead an independent review into the organisational culture of Rowing Ireland’s High-Performance programme, the Government confirmed today.<\/p>\n
Last January an Oireachtas hearing through the Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport around Rowing Ireland’s operations led to an agreement to host the review into athlete welfare and best practice governance.<\/p>\n
The Oireachtas hearing was called after a series of Sunday Independent articles on the athlete welfare within their training unit in the lead-up to the Tokyo and Paris Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
Former members of the unit, Olympians Monika Dukarska and Sanita Puspure, also outlined their experiences in a private session of the committee earlier in January.<\/p>\n
Psychologist Dr Paul Gaffney told the committee that in 2024 he was treating 12 current and former athletes from the programme.<\/p>\n
Following the committee meeting, the Government said an independent review of the response to the matters “could be helpful”.<\/p>\n
Rowing Ireland has said it will “engage constructively” with the independent review.<\/p>\n
The review will also include how Rowing Ireland\u2019s leading training unit operates with Sport Ireland and recommendations will be provided in its publication.<\/p>\n
A former Welsh rugby international, Bennett now operates as a consultant in sports governance and has worked across a range of organisations to strengthen governance structures, including the Football Association, the Irish Rugby Football Union and smaller voluntary sporting bodies.<\/p>\n
She will be supported in conducting the review by Kathryn Ball, a high-performance consultant and former British rower who competed in the 1984 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O\u2019Donovan TD, and Minister for State for Sport and Postal Policy, Charlie McConalogue TD, made the appointments.<\/p>\n
Minister O\u2019Donovan said: “I want to acknowledge the experiences shared by some athletes in the Rowing Ireland High-Performance Programme and commend their courage in coming forward. Amanda has significant experience in the sports sector as both an athlete and governance specialist, she is therefore ideally positioned to carry out this important work. During the process she will engage with current and former high-performance rowers to hear their experiences, views and idea.”<\/p>\n
The review process will commence in the coming weeks and is expected to be concluded by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
It is hoped that recommendations arising from this review could then be actioned and embedded in Ireland’s overall sports governance and administration framework, including in the context of the next 10-year National Sports Policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amanda Bennett will spearhead an independent review into the organisational culture of Rowing Ireland’s High-Performance programme, the Government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-513680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}