The Minister for Sport, James McDaid, said in the Dail this week that among the many "outrageous incidents" connected to the Olympic Committee of Ireland at the Sydney games, the way the Ambassador was treated on a number of occasions was "embarrassing". What did he mean? One such incident went as follows: when the President, Mrs McAleese, rang our Ambassador in Australia, Dick O'Brien, wanting to congratulate Sonia O'Sullivan on her Olympic silver medal win, there was a great kerfuffle over contacting the athlete. O'Brien, unique among ambassadors, did not have accreditation to enter the top-level area where the OCI was. He was forced to ask the Governor of New South Wales to contact O'Sullivan and say the President was on the line.