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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
15 August 2025
The 2025 Arbiter Manual was published recently and you can download it from this website. This supersedes the version published last year after the Bueapest olympiad.
The manual should be studied by all active arbiters and anyone in training to become a licensed arbiter.
You can also read on the FIDE website the report on the two-day Arbiters Commission meeting that was held in Budapest.
The ICU has now scheduled a training course for prospective National Arbiters for the weekend 15-16 November at a venue yet to be announced. Anyone who would like to become a licensed arbiter is invited to express their interest on the ICU website or can contact the ICU tournament director Ivan Baburin.
A new PDF list of arbiters was published on August 11th and continues to show how few licensed arbiters we have in Ireland. It is unclear whether there are any active holders of the International Arbiter title living on the island now that Gerry Graham has moved to Spain and Ted Jennings is perhaps the only one, if he is in fact active any more.
Ireland's newest International Arbiter Paul McKeown, who was awarded the title last year, is English-based. He has now been promoted to a C license which qualifies him to be Chief Arbiter at more important events.
Several people who achieved the IA title years ago are listed as inactive. (They were from the time before the intermediate FIDE Arbiter title was introduced.)
We also have two relatively new FIDE Arbiters who got the titles in 2024: John Loughran and Adam Rushe. No new Irish FAs have been licensed as yet this year.
The first stage towards becoming a FIDE Arbiter is to earn the National Arbiter title. Only IAs and FIDE Arbiters are licensed to run title tournaments but National Arbiters can run FIDE-rated tournaments and matches where no master titles are earned.
In the years since the Covid pandemic, it is good to see that several new National Arbiters have qualified and been licensed with FIDE, but with one exception they are all male.
Congratulations to Eibhia Ni Mhuireagain who has qualified as an NA last year, but we urgently need more female arbiters now. Eibhia was a member of the Irish women's team at the 2022 Chennai olympiad.
Several relatively new male licensed NAs appear on the latest list. We hope that some of these can graduate to FIDE Arbiter soon, for which they will need practice, study and perhaps mentoring by one of the currently active FAs.
The current (11 August 2025) list of active licensed arbiters for Ireland is as follows, ordered first by title and then alphabetically. (Arbiters described by FIDE as inactive are not included.)
International Arbiters: Gerry Graham, Paul McKeown, Ted Jennings.
FIDE Arbiters: Ivan Baburin, Rory Delaney (living in Britain?), Tim D. Harding, John Loughran, John McMorrow, Pete Morriss, Andrew O'Brien, Colm O Muireagain, Yuriy Petrenko, Ruth Redmond, Adam Rushe and Brian Scully.
National Arbiters: Vincent Bissett, Adrian Dornford-Smith, Christopher Dorrian, Conor Dunne, Pat Fitzsimons, James Forde, Richard Gould, Ross Harris, Brendan Jamison, Zsolt Kardkovacs, Andrew Kelly (a recent addition), Edward Khanzarov, Andrew Kildea, Neal Kirby, Damien Lavery, Gerald MacElligott (new this year), Dermot Maguire (new), Gabriel Mirza (currently suspended by ICU), Oissine Murchadha (recent), Mark Newman, Eibhia Ni Mhuireagain, Vjekoslav Novak, Krzysztof Nowak (new), Paul O'Connor (recent), Kevin O'Flaherty, Niall O'Higgins (recent), Frank Pentony (recent), Paul Reaney (new), Pat Scanlan, Herbert Scarry, Peter Scott, Stephen Short, Ronan Sutton, Pat Twomey, Mark R. Watkins, and Henry Williams.
See also Tim's personal arbiter page.
Back to our main page of Irish chess news.
For further information on Irish chess, including ratings, how to join, a tournament calendar and a list of officials, please see the Irish Chess Union website.