Mr. Eamonn Colclough:

It is a privilege to be here to address the committee and to be in the presence of the athletes we have. These are the prime athletes in Irish sport. Ms Pušpure, who is beside me, is the golden woman of Irish sport with two World Championship medals - one gold and one silver. It is an amazing privilege. I started rowing in the 1960s. It was beyond our wildest dreams and it was not until the 1970s that Seán Drea almost single-handedly dragged us into the sport closely followed by the Garda coxed fours rowing team. We decided then rather than having individuals or clubs doing it, we would open up a national squad so that talented athletes from all the clubs throughout the 32 counties could have the opportunity to be brought together, nurtured and developed - not only to compete with the best but to beat the best. We have been phenomenally successful. How well our athletes have done has been a revelation. I was at a FISA congress after the World Championships this year at which several people, including the president of FISA and the great Sir Steve Redgrave, the five-time Olympic champion, came over to me. Here I was - the humble Irishman - sitting down with my votes at the congress but the number of people who came up to me and asked about what we were doing in Ireland and how we were doing it was amazing because they know we work on a shoestring. Of course, it is down to hard work. In our high-performance director, Antonio Maurogiovanni, we have the Alex Ferguson of rowing and I hope we can keep him because he has been so phenomenally successful. The committee has no concept of how hard the athletes train. Why are they beating everybody else in the world? It is because they train harder than everybody else.

There is no inspiration and it is not the air down in Cork, although Cork has a reputation for producing fabulous athletes. They train harder than everyone else. They are truly amazing people. The demands placed on them are phenomenal.