  The notion of adequate subgroups was introduced by Jack Thorne. It is a
weakening of the notion of big subgroup used by Wiles and Taylor in proving
automorphy lifting theorems for certain Galois representations. Using this
idea, Thorne was able to prove some new lifting theorems. In an appendix to
Thorne's article, it was shown in that certain groups were adequate. One of the
key aspects was the question of whether the span of the semsimple elements in
the group is the full endomorphism ring of an absolutely irreducible module. We
show that this is the case in prime characteristic p for p-solvable groups as
long the dimension is not divisible by p. We also observe that the condition
holds for certain infinite groups. Finally, we present the first examples
showing that this condition need not hold and give a negative answer to a
question of Richard Taylor.
