I will represent Ireland (at zero cost to the ICU) in the FIDE meeting in Tallinn (Executive Board – the "off year" Congress - October 2013; the 2012 FIDE Congress took place prior to last year's AGM) and the ECU meeting also to be held there. The FIDE Congress runs September 30 and I will be travelling there on September 29, which precludes my attendance at our AGM.

The major task during the year was to compile a fully detailed list of Irish title norm results achieved prior to July 2005. This was required by changes to the FIDE Title qualification system. When I was Chairman of FIDE's Qualification Commission twenty years ago, I began pressing to have all title norms registered and listed by FIDE, so that title awards could be "automated" in a fully transparent way. The changes made this year finally bring that to reality. The big problem was always that of "old" norms, those achieved long ago and that were hard to verify. The new system eliminates such problems, albeit at the cost of registering norms now or losing them forever. It needed a lot of work and I thank those members of the executive who assisted, but should note especially the help received from two non-members: Sean Coffey and David McAlister.

As a result of our agreement with FIDE Chess in Schools, Moves for Life have now received a batch of boards, sets, very fine demo boards as well as several thousand euros to help with the work of promoting chess in schools in Ireland.

All junior members of the ICU will be added to FIDE's student rating system. There is no charge for games rated in this way. Thus we effectively get a free rating system for all games played by our juniors, not just those under full tournament conditions.