Apart from the usual secretarial functions, minute taking, etc, the highlights of the year were...

• New Rapid-play Rating System
• 400 new ICU members, through rapid-plays. Maybe 1000 next year?
• 6 new FIDE titled players certified
• 1 IM – Sam Collins
• 2 WFM's – Hannah Lowry-O'Reilly and Poornima Menon
• 3 FM's – Kevin O'Connell, Alex Lopez and Stephen Jessel
• Free Swissperfect for Irish schools. (Part of a 50 Licences deal for half price)
• Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal now in ICU hands

This has to have been one of the more successful ICU years in recent times..!

An estimated 50,000 children who learned how to play chess in the last nine years have eluded the ICU despite many efforts to entice them into serious Irish chess. Only 229 were members of the ICU in 2004-05. All the others have been lost.

The reasons are obvious for those of us involved in junior chess coaching in schools. The jump from one hour of chess per week in school to a long weekend using clocks and recording games is just too big. Parents complain about the long wait between games and the expense of accommodation and food. Hopefully rapidplays are going to help change that. (Although recent experience suggests a Blitz rating system may be even more appropriate!)

Disputes: Colm Daly, with LCU support, complained about being refused entry by Kilkenny. The outcome was the exclusion of the Kilkenny Masters section in the Grand Prix. Dispute-resolution is a morale sapping activity for the ICU Executive and this particular one straddled four executive meetings. A Disputes procedure has now been written to allow more discretion by the ICU as to what it gets involved with, and how it handles it. More responsibility is being put on Provincial Unions to handle those that occur within their locality.

Some musings ...

ICU Administration

E-mail is now the standard way of doing business among committee members. Every member has one and not all reveal their postal addresses. Letters are much more difficult to handle; how does one get them copied to all members, especially if some don't/can't attend the next meeting – there's no clear answer. For the secretary's position, broadband has become a necessity, especially with so many e-mails coming in (over 1100 in the last year).

ICU limitations

In my experience of ICU meetings, people do not always realize that the Committee members are voted in by the rank and file membership, and not the committee themselves. Those who complain about committee members not doing their job, not attending, etc, often ask why don't we replace them? Well, the answer is...because the rank and file voted them in, we cannot fire, eat, kidnap or execute them!

Declining Numbers at weekend tournaments

10% in some cases. I suspect that fast rising entry fees have contributed to this. There may be no option but to increase and I don't know the expenses.

I'll conclude this concise report by using an administrative technique attributed to Ronald Reagan...'A report should not be more than one A4 page long, otherwise you don't understand your topic.'

Thanks for everyones' help during the year, and good luck to the incoming committee.