FR Ronald Bennett, the 72-year-old Franciscan friar sent to jail by the Court of Criminal Appeal last Monday after the DPP appealed the leniency of an earlier sentence, was one of the most important figures in children's swimming.

The former bursar, spiritual director and sports master of the Franciscans' fee-paying boarding school in Gormanston, Co Meath, co-founded the allIreland body, the Irish Schools Swimming Association, in February 1969. That organisation is affiliated to the sport's national governing body, Swim Ireland, and runs the annual minor and secondary schools championships around the country.

A week before his appearance at Dublin Circuit Court on 29 June last year, Bennett changed his not-guilty plea to guilty on six sample charges of the indecent assault of four schoolboys between 1974 and 1981. There had originally been more than 40 charges against him. At his trial last July, he received a five-year suspended sentence and entered into a bond of Euro1,000 to keep the peace for five years while undertaking to abide by the Franciscan order's code of practice.

Last Monday, the Court of Criminal Appeal found that the sentence did not reflect the seriousness of the offences or the consequences for the victims and ruled that the priest should serve twoand-a-half years of his jail sentence.

Bennett worked closely with George Gibney and Derry O'Rourke, hosting regular training camps in the 1970s and 1980s at the school's pool, which were run, at the priest's invitation, by the notorious coaches. One of the first 11 women whose complaints against O'Rourke resulted in his 12-year jail sentence in January 1998 recalls attending regular residential camps at the school under the aegis of O'Rourke.

"The pool was nothing to write home about and I used to wonder why we went there so often. We had training camps there at least once a year, " says this former member of King's Hospital Swimming Club, housed in a private west Dublin school. "They were always overnights. They were supposed to be bonding training camps."

The woman's memory of the camps is corroborated by European silver medallist Gary O'Toole, who says: "I remember once being on a training camp in Gormanston run by George Gibney. We were all supposed to bond down there."

A swimmer's father says: "Before George Gibney hit the big time, he used to be the coach to Irish schools' swimming."

O'Toole also remembers Fr Ronald Bennett in another of the priest's incarnations. In 1977, Bennett became secretary of FISEC, an international body that organises the World Catholic Games for schoolchildren. FISEC's membership is confined to traditionally Catholic countries such as Italy, Spain, Belgium, Malta, France and Ireland. The annual games were inaugurated in 1948 and are meant to foster good relations between children of different countries "through the medium of sport carried out in an educational, disciplined and Christian manner".

Bennett was team manager for Ireland at the Madrid games in 1971 and at the Rome games the following year. As late as 1995 - despite a child sexual-abuse complaint having been made against him to the college principal by parents of a Gormanston boarder in 1973 - he continued to be the swimming supervisor on behalf of the FISEC international technical committee.

"When I was a child, Ronald Bennett took about five of us to Hyelda in the south of Spain. He was the chef de mission remembers. "When I was living in New York and studying medicine, I was watching the RT� news on the web and there was a report of his court appearance. I said, 'Jesus, there's that guy who brought us to the south of Spain'."

Ronald Bennett was based in Drogheda after his ordination. He got involved in the Leinster league football club that is now Drogheda FC and became president of the Drogheda Supporters' Club.

After that, he was in charge of all sports at Gormanston for 30 years. He was honorary treasurer of the Irish Schoolboys' Swimming Association (ISSA) from 1971 and was elected its president for two terms of office in 1974 and 1990.

His listed address on the register of swimming officials was Broc House in Nutley Lane, Dublin 4, the Franciscans' provincial head office. The ISSA runs the annual schools' international swimming gala between Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.

Another string to his bow was Gormanston sports day, which he organised every year from 1964 until 1993. He was president of Leinster Athletics for six years and was ultimately elected chairman of Irish Schools Athletics.

According to people who remember him in his heyday, Bennett was an enthusiastic advocate of the philosophy that sport provides a healthy lifestyle for energetic young children.

One of his victims attempted to have his case for repeated sexual abuse by the priest recorded at the state inquiry into child sex abuse in swimming which was established in 1998 after Derry O'Rourke was jailed. The inquiry chairman, Roderick Murphy, who is now a High Court judge, ruled that his case fell outside the inquiry's terms of reference.