Schools
There was no Development Officer last season, and prior to that Michael Crowe had been for a few years. His development and running of a very successful Nationwide Primary and Secondary Schools 'Checkmate League', with Maurice Buckley, was a significant contribution.
There have been two schools leagues running for some years now, the other being the ChessZ League which I administer. I'm regarding the ChessZ league as my main contribution here. Both leagues complement each other with hundreds of teams taking part. The ChessZ league runs 3 sections; Champions, Novices and Girls-only.
I would regard the Girls-only League as the main unique one. Last Seasons Primary Schools Girls Champions were Templemary NS from Co Mayo. The School appeared in a half hour Documentary on Monday, 3-Sep-07 on RTE 1, with about 3 minutes devoted to their chess activities. Villiers School, Limerick won last seasons Secondary schools Girls-only league.
My Schools Chess training activities in Limerick, Cork and Clonmel added about 1000 more to the pool. Five chess camps added another 150 or so.
Rapidplays
Monthly Rapidplays have been instituted in Limerick and Galway, and over 250 different players took part with c45 having played at least ¾ of the events. More fixtures have been planned for this season see www.ChessZ.com. One weakness in the system is that I'm some way behind in keeping the ratings updated.
Ulster
There are 9 counties in Ulster. When the Northern Ireland counties of the Ulster Chess Union left the ICU some years ago, three were left behind with no ICU representation for Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. All I've done here is identify half a dozen names which will be written to in the next week advising them of the situation.
GMs and IMs
I've been in and out of chess for some 35 years now, and we have yet to produce a GM (although we imported a good one!). We have 6 IMs, 3 of whom I would regard as possible prospects, but with diminishing hopes.
Discussions with most of them revealed that it could easily take one year full-time to achieve this goal, but I don't think any can take the unpaid time off. It would also help if they could reside in Budapest or Spain where relevant tournaments take part. I put the idea of a Grandmaster Fund to the ICU but it was defeated, leaving me with the thought of "am I in the right chess union"?!
One good thing which came out of it was the information that Spain is a good place to go for 'Norm' tournaments. I passed this information along to our more promising teen-Juniors, and in the last few months (by coincidence or otherwise), Steven Hanly, Jan Mueller, Sam Osborne, Liam Normoyle, David Fitzsimons have played in tournaments there.
Chess for the Masses
Nothing done here, but many questions raised. e.g. Why are there 10,000s of Registered Bridge players compared to chess players? There are about 1000 towns and villages in Ireland why so few chess clubs? Why is there no Chess Centre, yet many towns have a Bridge Centre? The Irish Golf Open had a 1st prize of c600k. The Irish Chess Open had 2.5K, less than ½% of the Golf why can't chess be popular on TV? Can a commercial angle be developed to make chess more popular?
If I can't get clubs started in Co Limerick, I've no hope elsewhere.
Development of Promising Juniors
This area is usually covered by the Junior Committee.