Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport Patrick O’Donovan TD and Minister of State for Sport and Postal Policy Charlie McConalogue TD have confirmed the appointment of Amanda Bennett to conduct an independent review into the organisational culture of Rowing Ireland’s High-Performance Programme.
The review will also examine the interaction between Rowing Ireland and Sport Ireland in this area and will make recommendations as appropriate.
Bennett is a former Welsh rugby international who now works as a consultant in sports governance. She has worked with a range of organisations to strengthen governance structures, including the Football Association in England, the Irish Rugby Football Union, and smaller voluntary sporting bodies.
She will be supported in the work by Kathryn Ball, a high-performance consultant and former British rower who competed at the 1984 Olympic Games.
The review is expected to begin in the coming weeks and to be completed by the end of the year.
The appointment follows a period of sustained scrutiny around the experiences of athletes within Rowing Ireland’s high-performance environment.
Earlier this year, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport examined high-performance athlete welfare and safeguarding, with representatives from Rowing Ireland and Sport Ireland appearing before the committee.
The hearing heard concerns around the handling of complaints, the structures available to athletes to raise issues, and the broader responsibilities of national governing bodies and Sport Ireland in ensuring that high-performance environments are safe as well as successful.
The discussion came after a series of reports in which former and current athletes had raised concerns about culture, treatment and welfare within the high-performance programme. Those concerns were repeatedly framed not only as an issue for rowing but as a test of the systems across Irish sport for identifying, escalating and addressing athlete welfare concerns.
Sport Ireland’s role was also questioned during the Oireachtas process, including the point at which it became aware of formal complaints and the actions taken thereafter. The wider issue raised by members of the committee was whether the safeguards available to athletes in high-performance environments are strong enough, independent enough and sufficiently trusted by those who may need to use them.
Speaking today, Minister O’Donovan 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 ideas.”
Minister McConalogue said the review should have a relevance beyond one sport.
“Safeguarding of athletes at all levels of sport is a shared responsibility, and there are lessons to be learned from the Rowing Ireland process,” he said. “The review represents an opportunity to strengthen not just how Rowing Ireland responds to safeguarding issues in the future but to embed best practice in the Irish sports sector more broadly, including in the context of the next National Sports Policy, which is currently in development.”
Rowing has been one of Ireland’s most successful Olympic and world championship sports in recent cycles, with medals at the highest level helping to lift the sport’s profile and justify substantial investment in high-performance structures.
That success, though, has now been set alongside a harder question for the sport and the system around it: whether medals and performance outcomes have been matched by the right culture, athlete voice, independent oversight, and duty of care.
The appointment of Bennett gives a formal shape to that process of examination.
It will be an opportunity to engage with athletes’ experiences and demonstrate that lessons can be learned and embedded. It will also feed into the broader question of how Irish sport governs high performance in a way that protects athletes while still allowing them to pursue excellence.
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