The panel3 still to find

1 of 4 confirmed, 2 awaiting a reply. 3 still to find.

Who to ring today

• overdueTadhg O’NeillWithdrew after accepting. Find a replacement.
• chaseBríd WalshNo reply in 38 days.
• waitingCaoimhe GallagherSent recently. Leave them alone for now.

Chasing acceptances is weeks of somebody’s evenings, and the thing that makes it hard is that nothing reminds you. A withdrawal after an acceptance sits at the top, because a withdrawal in March is an emergency and a decline in November is a choice.

Correspondence — Bríd Walsh

• 8 October — Invitation sent by email. (Secretary)
• 22 October — Rang; no answer, left a message. (Secretary)
• 2 November — Emailed again, copied to her school address. (Chairperson)

Append-only. “Did anybody actually ring her?” is a question that needs an answer, and a log the application can rewrite answers it with whatever the last person wished had happened.

Availability2 short

• Saturday afternoon is short 1, and can only be covered by asking somebody who said "if needed".
• Sunday morning has 0 of 2 confirmed and nobody left to ask. Invite somebody else.

Asked months ahead, while there is still time to invite somebody else — the only point at which this question has a cheap answer. Nothing said at all counts as unavailable: assuming somebody is free because they never replied is how an adjudicator ends up on a rota they never agreed to.

Registration1 affecting results

• expiredCaoimhe Gallagher: Their An Coimisiún registration expires on 2026-02-28, 14 days before the event. An expired registration invalidates the results they adjudicate.
• unrecordedÓrla Kavanagh: No registration has been recorded. That is not the same as an expired one, and it is not safe either — ask them for it before the syllabus publishes.

Checked against the event date, never against today. A registration that is current when you look and lapses the week before the feis is the case that catches committees out — and an expired one invalidates the results that adjudicator produced. An unrecorded one is loud but not blocking: the platform cannot tell a genuinely missing registration from a data-entry gap.

Music1 stage would fall silent, 180 minutes in total.

A stage cannot run without music and a musician cannot play for seven hours without a break. The cover is not always a second musician — a recorded track over lunch is the honest answer for a small feis, and the platform should plan it rather than treat it as a failure.

An expense claim£315.90

• Airport transfer, Saturday (45.00) has no receipt attached. Worth asking before approving.
• The claim totals 315.90, over the 300.00 agreed. Approve the difference deliberately or query it.

565.90 outstanding of 565.90 (fee 250.00, expenses 315.90).

Mileage is computed from the agreed rate, never typed as a total: a claimant doing 142 miles at 45p in their head writes £64.90 and is 20p out, and the conversation about the 20p costs more than the 20p. A missing receipt is a query, not a rejection — the adjudicator who lost one at an airport still travelled.

Who we have used1 to think about

Máire Ní Bhriain has adjudicated 3 years running. Worth a deliberate decision rather than a default.

Committees rotate adjudicators for variety and to avoid the appearance of favouritism toward particular schools. Note the words appearance of: nothing here judges anybody, it reports how often and how recently somebody worked. Whether that matters is the committee’s decision.