Margaret Cremen and Aoife Casey comfortably made it through to the A/B Semi of the lightweight women's double on day two of the 2023 World Rowing Championships in Belgrade.
With two crews to advance directly, it was Ireland and Romania that broke away from the rest of the field shortly after the halfway mark.
Romania's Ionela Cozmiuc and Mariana-Laura Dumitru, who won silver in this event back in July, finished .38 of a second ahead of the Irish crew.
A win for Alison Bergin and Zoe Hyde sees them into the A/B Semi for the women's double.
In a competitive race, the top three crews were less than two second apart coming into the final 500. Ireland were the fastest boat on the water for the second half of the race and it was enough to put them ahead of Lithuania to take first.
They're up next on Thursday for the A/B Semi, where progression to the A Final will secure a definite place in Paris 2024.
The women's four combination of Eimear Lambe, Sanita Puspure, Imogen Magner and Natalie Long raced for the first time this morning.
Sitting in third place from the start Ireland held their position, doing enough to move straight through to the A/B Semi.
Great Britain, the reigning World Champions, finished in first place with Australia, Tokyo 2020 champions, in second.
Lightweight sculler Jake McCarthy is into the quarter-finals after a win in his repechage. McCarthy was positioned in second place throughout the race, but moved into first place in the final quarter ahead of the New Zealand sculler Finlay Hamill.
With two to qualify for the quarter-finals, McCarthy was able to ease up coming into the line with his fate secured.
John Kearney, Jack Dorney, Adam Murphy and Fionnán McQuillan-Tolan are into the repechage after a sixth-place finish in the heat of the men's four.
They will race again tomorrow against Denmark, Ukraine, Romania and Germany with three to go through to the A/B Semi.
The women's pair of Fiona Murtagh and Aifric Keogh finished second in their heat to advance to tomorrow's repechage, with just one boat to progress to the A/B Semi.
Winners of the heat, Veronique Meester and Ymkje Clevering from the Netherlands won silver at Europeans earlier this year and were part of the Dutch four that won silver at the Tokyo Olympics.
The men's quad of Brian Colsh, Andrew Sheehan, Ronan Byrne and Konan Pazzaia finished sixth in their heat sending them into the repechage.
This is the first time that Ireland have had a heavyweight men's quad compete at a World Championships with the quad only being raced four times between 2004 and 2007 at World Cups.
Three of the four rowers just recently raced and medalled at the U23 World Championships, with Colsh and Pazzaia winning gold in the double and Sheehan winning silver in the single.
They race the repechage tomorrow where they face Czechia, Lithuania, Norway, Australia and the USA with three boats to make the semi-finals.
