I have been making good in roads in to the Irish Prison service and have visited a number of prison's throughout the year to establish chess on the curriculums of their education centres. Overall the response to this has been very positive with chess now been played on a more formal basis. I would like to express my very grateful thanks to Una O'Boyle who regularly attended Arbour Hill Prison, Dublin to supervise the initial stages of the chess club. She did this on a completely voluntary basis taking time out of her busy schedule to fit this in.
The Bunratty tournament this year was a great success with a good increase in numbers particularly from Ulster where I visited shortly after the tournament. I mention Bunratty purely because I am personally involved in supporting this. This year saw the first all play all Bunratty Classic which I'm sure as an added attraction helped boost the numbers. This event will be held again in February 2014.
The Reach Out program I started did result initially in a number of pubs subscribing and some purchasing equipment after an article I wrote for the Vintners Magazine was published earlier in the year. I haven't pursued this since, but will once the web site can accommodate this information in a more user friendly way. At the moment this information is hidden away in the articles section so is not easily accessible to a site first user. Once this limitation can be lifted with hopefully a new site I can start back work on this.
I have been working also with Moves for Life, and am currently going through the administrative red tape in order to get this registered on a charitable status. There are a number of hoops to get through but it is slowly happening.
I met and made a presentation to the youth organisation Foroige in order to try and establish links with this organisation which has a huge membership of teenagers (around 60000) and therefore a great opportunity to attract some to chess. At the current time we are getting a "special interest group" set up for chess within Foroige and are looking at ways the ICU and the clubs of Ireland can assist and benefit from this.
A good number of proposals have been sent out to companies across Ireland to find a commercial partner. Each time I visit Ireland I bring a sackful of mail to go out but as yet I can't report anything positive here except to say its a numbers game and eventually I'm sure we will receive some interest.
In all I've visited Ireland 8 times over the year for ICU work taking in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Belfast and of course Bunratty. Now with a lot of groundwork laid down I'm quite sure the next year will be more fruitful.