Michael Nugent

For the American football placekicker, see Mike Nugent.

Michael Nugent
Born	(1961-06-01) June 1, 1961 Dublin, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Education	St. Aidan's C.B.S. Dublin Institute of Technology
Occupation(s)	Writer and activist
Known for	Writing I, Keano; Challenging Irish blasphemy law
Title	Chairperson, Atheist Ireland
Website	http://www.michaelnugent.com http://twitter.com/micknugent

Michael Nugent (born 1 June 1961) is an Irish writer and activist. He has written three books, co-written two and was one of the three writers of comedy musical play I, Keano. He has campaigned on many political issues, often with his late wife Anne Holliday, and he is chairperson of the advocacy group Atheist Ireland. He argues that atheism provides a better model of reality, and a better basis for morality, than believing in gods; that atheists can enjoy the benefits that many people get from religion, without the harmful effects; and that the state should be secular, promoting neither religion nor atheism. He writes a blog about happiness and atheism, and he supports Bohemians and Leeds United football clubs.

Early life

Nugent was completing a project on the Gospels in primary school when he started to question the “comic book” nature of the Bible. He attended St. Aidan's C.B.S. secondary school in Whitehall in Dublin. He graduated in visual communications in 1983 at the College of Marketing and Design, now part of the Dublin Institute of Technology. He has since addressed graduate events at both institutions. In 1983, he was elected president of the college students' union and students' representative on the Dublin City Council Vocational Education Committee. In 1984, he was defeated when he ran for the post of education officer in the Union of Students in Ireland, in opposition to Joe Duffy, then USI president, who is now a broadcaster with RTE. He then took a course in product development, and set up as a freelance designer.

Marriage

In 2009 Nugent married his longtime partner Anne Holliday, after she was diagnosed with cancer. She died on 9 April 2011, aged 57. Holliday and Nugent were founder members in 1988 of New Consensus, the group which called for the revision of the Republic’s territorial claim on the North and devolved government for the people of Northern Ireland based on “mutual respect, civil liberty and freely given allegiance”, and they helped to organise the Peace Train campaign to end disruption of the north-south rail link by the IRA. Holliday was also a Simon Community volunteer, a founder member of the Limerick chapter of the Irish Georgian Society, campaigned to save Wood Quay, and was active in residents rights issues. She worked as a secretary at the law firm Matheson Ormsby Prentice, a Dail secretary for TDs Michael Keating and Roger Garland, personal assistant to National Museum Director Pat Wallace, in media relations and special projects at the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism, and in the Tánaiste’s office at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

Writing

In 1993 Nugent turned his hand to writing and teamed up with Sam Smyth, the Irish journalist and broadcaster. Between 1993 and 2005 Nugent wrote three books, co-wrote two and was one of the writing team on I, Keano, a musical comedy play. Under the exemption scheme for artists, introduced in 1969 by Charles Haughey, artists were exempt from paying income tax on their earnings. While biography or other books had to be declared to have 'artistic merit' by the Arts Council to benefit from the scheme, works of fiction were exempt from tax. In 2006 the threshold was capped at €250,000 and in 2011 lowered to €40,000.

Works

• MichaelNugent.com, a blog about happiness, atheism and life, started in 2008
• I, Keano, comedy musical play with Arthur Mathews and Paul Woodfull, 2005
• Absurdly Yours – The Michael Nugent Letters, 2004 ISBN 1-84131-671-7
• That’s Ireland – A Miscellany, with Damien Corless, 2003 ISBN 1-84131-633-4
• Ireland on the Internet – The Definitive Guide, 1995 ISBN 0-86121-647-4
• Dear Me – The Diary of John Mackay, 1994 ISBN 0-86121-615-6
• Dear John – The John Mackay Letters, with Sam Smyth, 1993 ISBN 0-86121-550-8 (hardback ISBN 0-86121-530-3)

Theatre

Nugent, with Arthur Mathews and Paul Woodfull, co-wrote I, Keano, a comedy musical play about footballer Roy Keane leaving the Republic of Ireland national football team before the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It was presented as a mock-epic melodrama about an ancient Roman legion preparing for war. In its first two years, over half a million people watched it, generating €10m ($13m) in ticket sales.

Books

Dear John was a number one bestseller in Ireland, co-written by Nugent and Sam Smyth. By writing prank letters, Nugent and Smyth convinced then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds to help the fictitious ‘John’ seek a grant from the Industrial Development Authority to produce dog bowls modelled on dinner plates; prompted Charles Haughey to meet ‘John’ to help fund a 'Bring Back Charlie' campaign, and provoked Pope John Paul II to pray for 'John's' children because his kids put condoms on the family chess-set bishops.

The Irish Times included Ireland on the Internet among its top ten computer books of 1995. That’s Ireland – A Miscellany, co-written with Damien Corless, was a hardback bestseller that included such trivia as that three in every ten TDs since 1922 have been called some variation of Paddy, Mick, Sean or Seamus, and that when the Pope held his youth Mass in Galway in 1979, each diocese was asked to send a baker in white overalls and a lame person with a stick or crutches.

In Absurdly Yours, Nugent pitched a new series of prank letters, ranging from planes without seats (for Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary) to scaffolding on Mount Everest (the Nepalese Government responded it would be "inappropriate"). The FAI offered to help with his invention of a left-footed football, but the GAA replied that they could detect a wind-up from 1,000 yards.

Activism

In 1986, Nugent joined the newly-founded Progressive Democrats, working with Michael Keating TD who he had befriended during his VEC days. He soon left the PDs, saying that he was disillusioned with the clientilist system and that he believed in the need to tackle the Northern Ireland problem on a cross-party basis.

In the late 1980s, Nugent was spokesperson for a campaign against the conviction of two Tallaght youths for robbery and assault. In 1990, Taoiseach Charles Haughey assured the youths’ families and Nugent that new evidence would be considered. In 1993, the government announced a new law to enable this to happen and, in 2001, the case was declared a miscarriage of justice.

New Consensus

In 1988, Nugent co-founded the New Consensus peace group with his partner Anne Holliday and Michael Fitzpatrick. He also chaired the group. Its launch meeting in April 1989 announced its aims as challenging ambivalence about murder in Northern Ireland, and promoting a democratic, pluralist and non-sectarian society with integrated education, a bill of rights and revision of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution.

In 1992, after an IRA bomb killed eight Protestant workmen in Teebane Cross, Nugent and six other men protested by chaining themselves across the entrance of the Sinn Féin office in Dublin. New Consensus also organised peace rallies and pickets of Sinn Féin and UDA offices, and collections of flowers after paramilitary killings. One picket of Sinn Féin included former Fine Gael Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, Workers’ Party leader Prionsias de Rossa, Alliance Party leader John Alderdice, Deputies Nora Owen (FG), Jim Mitchell (FG), Austin Currie (FG), Monica Barnes (FG), Pat McCartan (WP), Eric Byrne (WP), Larry McMahon (FG), Nuala Fennel (FG), and Roger Garland (Green Party) along with the independent Senators David Norris and Shane Ross.

Sinn Féin regularly said that New Consensus did not protest against violence by the security forces in Northern Ireland. Nugent responded that they protested when agents of the British or Irish States acted outside the law, although this never happened When New Consensus picketed the Belfast offices of the loyalist UDA, some said that this was only in response to criticism of imbalance. Also some single-issue peace groups, such as Peace 93 and the Peace Train Organisation, distanced themselves from the political aims of New Consensus.

In 1970 Sinn Féin had split into Provisional and Official Sinn Féin, with Official Sinn Féin later becoming the Workers’ Party and then Democratic Left before merging with the Labour Party. This mirrored a split within the IRA, which split into the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA. The Official IRA officially decommissioned in 2010. Although the group declined in support from 1972 it remained linked to Official Sinn Fein and was frequently accused of committing robberies and fraud in order to fund the party. Some political commentators such as Vincent Browne and Paddy Prendeville said that the Workers’ Party and Democratic Left had an attitude to Northern Ireland that was close to Ulster unionism. New Consensus was regularly derided by Sinn Féin and a number of commentators who stated that the group was a front for the Workers' Party. During pickets members of Sinn Fein would challenge picketers about the Official IRA and killings and acts associated with the group. Both New Consensus and the parties denied this.

Libel case

In 1996, Nugent, Anne Holliday and Michael Fitzpatrick won a libel action against the Irish author and historian Tim Pat Coogan and Harper Collins Publishers over a claim that "New Consensus" was an offshoot of Official Sinn Fein. The author and publishers apologized in court, stating they had made a mistake.

Veritas

In 1992, Nugent highlighted that Veritas, a bookshop owned by the Catholic Bishops, was breaking the law by selling an anti-abortion book, Closed by Joseph Scheidler, which contained abortion clinic contact details for potential protestors. Under Irish law at the time no contact details of any abortion service could be published.

Joycean home

In 1996, he and his partner Anne Holliday organised an email campaign to protest against the proposed demolition of James Joyce’s childhood home in Drumcondra. The campaign received messages of support from Joyce scholars in Britain, Australia, Canada and the US, which were passed on to Dublin Corporation.

Council election candidate

In 1999, he was a local election candidate for Dublin City Council, running for Fine Gael in the Ballymun-Whitehall local electoral area, but he failed to be elected.

European Investment Bank

In 2000, Nugent helped to stop the Irish government appointing a disgraced former judge, Hugh O’Flaherty, to the European Investment Bank. The Bank accepted Nugent’s argument that they had a statutory duty to consider other candidates, and he forwarded the CV of Irish Senator and business editor Shane Ross. After public pressure, O'Flaherty withdrew his candidacy.

Football related activism

Nugent supports Bohemians and Leeds United football clubs. In 2002, he helped to prevent the Football Association of Ireland from selling broadcast rights for international matches to Sky television, but failed in an attempt to create a representative body for Irish football fans. In 2008, he was removed as a director of Bohemian Football Club after he questioned the viability of the club’s growing expenditure. Two years later, the club was reported to be entering the most critical stage in its history.

Atheist Ireland

Nugent is the inaugural chairperson of Atheist Ireland, an advocacy group for an ethical and secular society free from superstition and supernaturalism. Its first AGM in July 2009 outlined specific aims, including the removal of references to God from the Irish constitution, the introduction of a secular education system, and a campaign to encourage people to read the Bible.

As chairperson of Atheist Ireland, Nugent has strongly opposed the law against blasphemous libel introduced by Justice Minister Dermot Ahern and passed by the Oireachtas in July 2009. Nugent described it as "silly and dangerous", and argued that ideas should always be open to criticism and ridicule. As part of the campaign, he was involved in the formation of the parody Church of Dermotology, which satirises organised religion and the concept of blasphemy, and in the launch of a website opposing the bill, called Blasphemy.ie. When the law came into force on 1 January 2010, Atheist Ireland published a list of 25 blasphemous quotes on this website to challenge it. In March 2010 the Justice Minister proposed that a referendum should be held to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Irish Constitution.

Nugent also used the blasphemy law to highlight other areas of the Irish Constitution which he felt were anomalous. He pointed out that to become a judge, a member of the Irish Council of State, or President of Ireland, a candidate must first swear a religious oath. He said that amendments were immediately required to address all such issues.

In June 2010, Nugent spoke at the Gods and Politics international atheist conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In August he called for the removal of the daily Angelus from RTE, saying that it amounted to a free advert for the Catholic Church, and he debated the issue on RTE radio with Roger Childs, RTE’s editor of religious programmes. In October he addressed a meeting in Brussels at which the Presidents of the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council discussed the fight against poverty and social exclusion with representatives of philosophical non-confessional organisations.

In March 2011, Nugent criticised the question “What is your religion?” in the coming Irish census. He said the census should instead ask “Do you have a religion?” and “If so, what is it?” He asked nonreligious Irish people to tick the No Religion box. He also predicted that moderate religious belief will become a minority position in many countries. He said that religion is being squeezed by science, which undermines its claims about reality, and secularism, which erodes its positions on morality.

In June 2011, Nugent was the opening speaker at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin, Ireland, which adopted the Dublin Declaration on Secularism and launched Atheist Alliance International, a newly restructured umbrella group for atheists worldwide. Nugent told the convention that atheists were arrogant “because we do not believe that the entire universe was created for our benefit” and because they did not believe “that the most powerful being ever created a universe of over 100 billion galaxies, each with over 100 billion stars like our sun, which existed for 14 billion years, and then picked one of the 100 billion galaxies and picked one of the 100 billion stars in that galaxy, and picked one planet revolving around that star and of the million species on that planet he picked one animal member of all those species and said: ‘I’ve really got to tell that guy to stop gathering sticks on the Sabbath’.”

In June 2011, irate Catholics protested against an art exhibition in University College Cork that included an image of the Madonna in a bikini by Hispanic artist Alma Lopez. Their calls for bans and protests were countered on RTE by Nugent, who later commented: "It was like discussing the rules of quidditch with people who believe Harry Potter was a documentary."

Media

Nugent has been profiled or interviewed in the Irish Times, the Sunday Business Post, the Sunday Independent and the BBC Mundo Spanish language website. He has been interviewed on various broadcast media including the BBC World Service, NPR’s All Things Considered, and RTE’s Prime Time, Ryan Tubridy, Spirit Moves and Seoige and O’Shea.

Nugent also speaks and debates on atheism, morality, Christianity, Islam and related issues, including at University College Cork, the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, the South Place Ethical Society in London, England, the Gods and Politics Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, University College Dublin, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and the World Atheist Convention in Dublin, Ireland.

External links

• Michael Nugent Website
• Michael Nugent on Twitter
• Michael Nugent at IrishPlayography.Com