Terms of use

Who runs this site

StarMethod.ie is run by Avlas Digital, a registered business name (Companies Registration Office, Register of Business Names No. 793798). Address: Park House, The Square, Claremorris, Co. Mayo, F12 HE97, Ireland. Contact: [email protected].

The site is an independent practice tool for competency and capability interviews in the Irish public sector. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to publicjobs.ie, the Public Appointments Service, any Government Department, the HSE or any local authority.

What the service is

You answer interview questions, by voice or by typing. The site turns speech into text, checks the answer against the published indicators of the relevant framework (for Civil Service grades, the Civil Service Capability Framework or the Civil Service Competency Framework, whichever your competition uses) and returns an estimated mark, the indicators it found evidence for, what to fix and the follow-up question a board would be likely to ask. The questions are our own, written from the published frameworks, official candidate booklets and interview advice, plus questions candidates have reported being asked.

How the reviews are made

Reviews are written by an AI language model, not by a person. It runs on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service in the EU under enterprise terms: your answers are not used to train it or any other model, are not shared with other customers, and are not the public ChatGPT. We do not build models on your answers either. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is kept and for how long; in short, your answers stay with your account until you delete them, and the only things we keep for improving the marking are anonymous counts, reviews you report to us, and a short-lived anonymised sample used to test changes to the marker.

An estimate, not a prediction

Every mark on this site is an estimate. Real boards are people, they differ from each other, and they mark the whole interview, not one answer. A high mark here does not mean you will pass, and a low mark here does not mean you will fail. The reviews are produced automatically and can be wrong; if one seems unfair, use the report button under it and we will look at it.

The service is a study aid. It does not give legal, HR or career advice, and it does not know the private marking scheme of any particular competition.

Free and paid access

Without paying you can run 3 full reviews (per account and per connection, over 30 days), read every public page and browse the question banks.

Paid access comes in two forms:

• Monthly plan, €25 a month. A subscription charged every month on the same date until you cancel. Cancel any time from your account page (Stripe customer portal); access runs to the end of the month already paid for and nothing more is charged.
• Six-month pass, €75 for six months. One payment. Access lasts 183 days from the day of payment (or from the end of any access you already hold). Nothing renews and we never charge your card again.

Both plans give the same access: up to 60 reviews a day, every grade on the site, and your answers and reviews saved to your account. The daily cap is there to stop scripts, not people; if you hit it in normal use, email us.

One plan at a time. While access is active, the site will not sell you another plan. Prices include VAT where it applies. Payments are handled by Stripe; we never see your card number.

Cancelling and refunds

Six-month pass. This is digital content supplied at once. Before you pay you tick a box asking for access to start immediately and acknowledging that you lose the 14-day right to cancel under the Consumer Rights Act 2022. The free demo exists so you can try the service first.

Monthly plan. You can cancel at any time. If you cancel within 14 days of your first payment, email us and we refund that payment, less a proportionate amount for the reviews you have already run. After 14 days, cancelling stops the next charge and access runs to the end of the paid month. Renewal payments are not refunded once the new month has started, except where the law says otherwise.

Something broken on our side, or a review clearly wrong? Email us. We would rather fix it or refund you than argue. Details on the refunds page.

Your account

Accounts are email based; we send you a one-time link and code instead of a password. Keep your inbox secure, because anyone who can read it can log in as you. One account is for one person. Sharing a paid account, or using scripts to submit answers, ends the access without refund.

Your answers and their reviews are stored with your account so you can come back to them. You can delete any answer from My Examples, and you can delete the whole account by emailing us. Deleting the account deletes the answers.

What you may not do

• Copy the question banks, indicator lists or reviews for resale or for another product.
• Submit content that is unlawful, abusive or someone else’s confidential information (for example, a real citizen’s personal data from your current job).
• Attempt to break, overload or reverse engineer the service.

Our content

Framework indicators are based on the Civil Service Capability Framework and the Civil Service Competency Framework, published by the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform under the Public Sector Information licence (CC BY 4.0). Everything else on the site, including the questions, the marking approach and the texts, belongs to Avlas Digital. Your own answers stay yours.

Availability and liability

We aim to keep the site up and accurate, but we do not promise it will always be available or error free. To the extent the law allows, our liability for any claim connected to the service is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing here limits rights you have as a consumer under Irish or EU law.

Changes and law

We may update these terms. Material changes are announced on this page with a new date and, for subscribers, by email before they take effect. These terms are governed by the laws of Ireland. Disputes go to the Irish courts; you can also use the EU online dispute resolution platform or the CCPC.