Next, Frank McCann, president of the Leinster branch of the Irish Amateur Swimming Association, was convicted in August 1996 of the double-murder of his wife, Esther, and their foster child, Jessica, after fathering a child by a teenage swimmer.

A year later, in December 1997, Gibney's successor as national and Olympic swimming coach, Derry O'Rourke, was convicted on 29 sample charges of child sex abuse against 11 girls. He was jailed in 1998.

One year after that, charges of indecent assault were brought against Fr Ronald Bennett, a Franciscan friar who founded the Irish Schoolboys' Swimming Association, serving as its president, secretary and treasurer.

Then, in 2003, a man complained to garda� in the southeast that he had been sexually abused as a child by another in"uential "gure in Irish swimming. Other complainants came forward and a file was sent to the DPP last July.

Two criminals repeatedly committing heinous crimes against children at the highest echelon of swimming might be considered an extraordinary coincidence. Three pushed the boundaries of credulity.

Now that it has emerged that a fourth dominant figure in the sport was also sexually assaulting children and that the DPP is considering the prosecution of a fifth official, the question arises as to whether an organised paedophile ring has been operating in the sport.

There is considerable overlap in the careers of all five. According to several swimmers, Gibney, O'Rourke and McCann were frequently on the pool bank at galas and, as children, some swimmers felt it was like running the gauntlet having to pass them, one after the other, en route to and from their swimming lanes.

Derry O'Rourke ran annual overnight training camps at Gormanston College, where Fr Bennett was the sports master, for his elite swimmers at King's Hospital Swimming Club. Likewise, George Gibney, who has been a coach for the Irish Schoolboys Swimming Association, founded by Bennett, was a frequent guest coach at Gormanston.

The earliest recorded complaint of assault against Gibney dates back to 1967 and involved an 11-year-old boy.

He allegedly committed another assault a year later on an 11-yearold girl. Roderick Murphy's report of the inquiry into sexual abuse in swimming records that a 12-year-old girl was advised by someone who had already abused her to take a lift home from Gibney after a training session. She claimed that the coach then abused her in his car.

Yet another witness, wrote Murphy, alleged that she had been frequently abused by another person at the pool when she was aged 11 to 13 and that, when she was 12, this person urged her to take a lift home from Gibney. This girl too claimed that the coach had touched her inappropriately in the car.

"The evidence of one of the witnesses that a previous abuser suggested she take a lift from the first named coach (Gibney - who is not, in fact, named in the Murphy report) was most disturbing, " he concluded.

A man who was abused by Gibney when he was a child swimmer told Frank McCann about it in February 1991. At the time, McCann was president of the Leinster branch of the Irish Amateur Swimming Association (IASA). A female assistant coach, in whom the victim also confided, sought a meeting with McCann around that time and, according to her, his response was that he hoped the matter would not become public while he was president. McCann resigned on 2 February 1992, after murdering his wife and foster child by burning down the family home in Rathfarnham.

In its submission to the Murphy inquiry, the Leinster branch of the swimming association stated that McCann never informed it of any complaint of sexual abuse.

When a letter complaining of child sexual abuse by Derry O'Rourke was posted to the IASA's head office at the House of Sport in Dublin, McCann took it upon himself to visit O'Rourke informally at the latter's swimming club. The letter later disappeared and no response to the complaint was ever forthcoming.

Many of the swimmers who were abused by O'Rourke and Gibney are disinclined to subscribe to the theory that they were operating a paedophile ring. In none of the cases successfully prosecuted before the courts was any of the victims abused by both coaches.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised if they knew about each other, that they recognised it in each other, " says one woman, "but I don't think they were passing children around among themselves."

Gary O'Toole, who was never abused by any of the coaches but who risked his own swimming career by spearheading a move to expose George Gibney's crimes, also believes that there was no paedophile ring operating in the sport.

"I don't think so at all, " he says.

"George Gibney and Derry O'Rourke didn't even like each other. They didn't encourage the swimmers in their respective clubs to mix with each other."