She's a Dublin City Firefighter - one of their Swift Water Rescue Technicians - and a former ladies winner of the Liffey Swim.

37 year old Rachel Lee is a mum of two from Malahide - and she's also the fastest Irish person ever to swim the English Channel, swimming from Dover to France in 9 hours and 40 minutes.

Alison Gilliand is the chair of Dublin City Council's Special Committee for Fire and Emergency Services - she says they're all very proud of her: "I know from talking to her colleagues that she is a really valued colleague. It was only ten days ago that she rescued someone from the Liffey, so swimming is actually part of her work as well."

Rachael hopes to pass on her skills: "I've started up a club now called Ocean Breakers, for people who want to do endurance in open water swimming, or maybe do triathlons or Iron Man."

Eoin Gaffney, another Irish Channel Swimmer and long time member of Leinster Open Sea says there are huge social and health benefits from taking to the sea: "As long as people have a reasonable ability, i.e. they can swim twenty or thirty lengths in the pool, they can come along and join our races, take it further, train harder. And if they want to go on and do races in Dublin, Leinster or Ireland, and eventually they can go on and do the English Channel."