Speech by President Connolly at the Bohemian Cooperatives Project
Richmond Education and Events Centre, Dublin, 1 May 2026
A Chairde,
I would like to thank Sean McCabe, Head of Climate Justice and Sustainability at Bohemians Football Club, for the invitation to be here today. I am delighted to speak at and take part in this exciting event.
Bohemians, a fan-owned club since 1890, has a long and distinguished record of civic engagement. Your five-year Football Social Responsibility strategy places community-led work at the centre of what the club does rather than at its margins. The club’s Social Impact Report, produced last year, placed the value of that contribution at some €8.5 million each year, across health, inclusion, rehabilitation, and climate. It is rare to find a sporting institution that has chosen to define itself in those terms, and rarer still to find one that has stuck with it.
Ba mhaith liom, mar Uachtarán na hÉireann, tréaslú libhse ar fad; lucht foirne, baill, oibrithe deonacha; mar is sibhse a oibríonn as lámha a chéile.
Is sibhse a thuigeann an gá agus an phráinn atá le cosaint agus caomhnú comharsanachta
Is sibhse a chinntíonn agus a láidríonn an nasc tábhachtach leis an bpobal.
Is sibhse a chothaíonn cairdeas, caidreamh agus muintearas.
Is sibhse bunchloch na sochaí sibhialta.
As we all know, the existential threat posed by climate change cannot be ignored. I want to commend the club for the leadership it has shown in environmental justice, most notably through the Bohemian Climate Cooperative and the Spark project, which works alongside local partners in Dublin 7 to develop genuinely community-led, practical responses to the crisis.
As President of Ireland, I want to acknowledge the staff, members and volunteers whose work makes that civic engagement real. The breadth of your work is remarkable, rehabilitation initiatives with residents from Mountjoy, disability access, refugee and anti-discrimination work, LGBTQ+ support, community-supported agriculture, civil advocacy. The club’s solidarity with the people of Gaza, expressed through the solidarity jerseys and the fundraising for families enduring conditions most of us can scarcely contemplate, has been both inspiring and materially significant. Taken together, this body of work demonstrates how a sporting institution can function as a social actor, one that does not simply contribute to the community in addition to its primary purpose, but understands the community as part of that purpose.
Your strategy Building Community Wealth 2026 – 2029, supported by Community Foundation Ireland, both builds and expands on that work. The strategy was kick started in June 2025 by a visit to your premises in Phibsborough from former President Mary Robinson and Bernie Sanders. Along with its mission and vision, that Strategy sets out a three-year plan for establishing a community wealth building ecosystem in Dublin. It advocates for a fairer economy, while also building the institutional foundations, partnerships and enterprise pathways to make that economy real. Significantly, the strategy also acknowledges that “community capacity cannot be built by isolated projects or time-bound initiatives”, a point also made by former President Mary Robinson in her foreword to the Strategy:
We are witnessing rising inequality, climate and biodiversity breakdown, and a widening sense that too many people feel shut out of the decisions that shape their lives. At such a moment, incremental change will not suffice.”
Indeed, in declaring a climate and biodiversity emergency in 2019, we acknowledged as a society, through Dáil Éireann, that we need transformative change.
You are providing the roadmap for that transformative change. You are doing so in the most democratic manner, and indeed, in line with current Government policy, which is to diversify our economy to build long-term resilience. You are showing us what is possible, and what has been achieved in other communities around the world - Mondragon in the Basque Country, Preston in England, Cleveland, in the US, and in Scotland, where community wealth building is now supported by national legislation.
Of course, you are building on our own history. Over 100 years ago, Horace Plunkett began the cooperative movement in Ireland. Plunkett understood that economic structures shape civic life as profoundly as civic life shapes economic structures.
And he understood that cooperative institutions require active stewardship across generations, or they will be reabsorbed by the very logics they were built to resist. Indeed, we have seen the rise and fall of cooperatives over that period of time for that very reason.
Your summit is a further step in advancing your Strategy. Today is a day for you to discuss in practical terms how civil society can advance community wealth building at grassroots level, build momentum behind it, and contribute to shaping the alliances, ideas and actions through which aspiration becomes implementation.
That will require no small amount of democratic engagement, energy, shared purpose and coalition-building. But I believe Bohemian Football Club is well placed, alongside its partners, to lead on that task. In your own words, and which I fully agree, you are, “proof that communities can own and sustain ambitious institutions in the real world. If a community can own a football club and see it compete every week against privately owned teams backed by millionaires and billionaires, then community ownership can also succeed far beyond sport in the wider economy too.”
I wish you well in the work ahead. It stands as testimony to what is possible when a sporting organisation chooses to direct its considerable civic capital toward being a force for good.
Tréaslaím libh arís as ucht an méid atá déanta agaibh, a chairde, an chaoi gur thapaigh sibh deiseanna chun dul i bhfeidhm ar bhealaí dearfacha ar bhur lucht leanúna ar son leas an phobail, ní amháin anseo in Éirinn ach dóibh siúd atá á bplúchadh agus a nglórtha á múchadh go neamhthrócaireach ag fórsaí ansmachta.
Tá go leor le foghlaim againn ar fad, ó cheannairí polaitiúla go lucht oiliúna na tíre, ón méid atá déanta agus á dhéanamh agaibh. Guím gach rath oraibh sa todhchaí.
Go raibh maith agaibh.