Jack Kelly announced himself on the international stage in emphatic fashion on Monday morning, breaking the national 100m breaststroke record on his senior debut for Ireland to qualify fourth fastest for Monday evening’s semi-finals at the European Aquatics Championships in Paris.The 23-year-old from Yonkers, New York, won his heat in 59.27, taking more than half a second off Darragh Greene’s previous national record of 59.76.Kelly, who qualifies for Ireland through his mother Claire, will return to the pool in the day’s evening session, drawn in lane five for the first semi-final at 6.05pm Irish time.Describing his morning effort as “amazing,” Kelly added: “That race kind of showed all the work I put into the sport this entire year. It’s cool to reward all the hard work I’ve been doing in Texas.”Kelly trains at the University of Texas under Bob Bowman, the former coach of US swimmer Michael Phelps.“I started off my career a little bit later and just continuously improved each year, and now that I’m able to represent Ireland on one of the bigger European stages, it means a lot,” said Kelly.“I’m really excited now that I’ve started the meet and I’m excited just to keep the ball rolling. I knew I definitely had it, but to see it in prelims is exciting. I’m pretty ecstatic to see how I swim tonight.”A two-time Ivy League champion over 100m breaststroke, Kelly shared a heat with Greene, but the latter missed out on the semi-finals after finishing in 1:00.51. Eoin Corby and Adam Bradley also failed to progress.Lottie Cullen also advanced to the semi-finals, qualifying 15th fastest in the 200m backstroke after finishing fifth in her heat in 2:12.84. The 21-year-old, who will swim in the first semi-final at 5.55pm, has had little time to recover after competing at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland.“We only had a week at home so I was just trying to recover and then also get a wee bit of work in as well, just some speed stuff, a bit of endurance stuff, just to turn things around and taper for this week,” she said.Daniel Wiffen’s first appearance for Ireland in a relay event – joining Evan Bailey, John Shortt and Cormac Rynn in the men’s 4x200m freestyle – ended in disappointment.Ireland were sixth, 6.57 seconds behind the leaders, when the Olympic champion started on the anchor leg. He was unable to make up a place, touching the wall for 7:12.99, just under a second outside the national record. Wiffen begins his individual campaign in the 800m freestyle on Tuesday morning.Liam Custer opened the session for Ireland with victory in his 400m individual medley heat in a new Irish record of 4:22.57, but it was not enough to earn a semi-final place.Rosaline Phelan won her 100m freestyle heat on her senior international debut in a personal best of 55.69, ahead of Victoria Catterson and Danielle Farrell, while Grace Davison finished eighth in her heat in 54.72, outside her Irish record of 54.45.Matthew Hamilton was unable to threaten Shane Ryan’s Irish record of 23.10 in the 50m butterfly, finishing 10th in his heat and 64th overall in 24.50.