Nearly all events at the Maldron Hotel.

9:30 a.m.

Peter Foynes

Peter Foynes will conduct a heritage stroll in the Shandon Historical Quarter. Peter has lived and worked in Shandon for many years and is very familiar with this historic area with its ancient streetscape, its proud history and its resilient and diverse community. He offers a unique insight into the economic, social and political area and his Saturday morning festival walks around the community are essential to an understanding of the heritage which includes its famous daughter Mary Harris.

Meet outside the Maldron.

11.00 a.m.

Joe Noonan

“Environmental Law & Environmental Justice – are they allies or enemies?’

Joe Noonan is a Solicitor in practice in Cork for 45 years.  Carbon dioxide in 1979 was 336 ppm. It is 426 ppm now. His legal work has included some of Cork and Ireland’s most controversial environmental issues, from how we licence and regulate hazardous industrial activities, the assessment of proposals to build a waste incinerator in Cork Harbour, and assisting people driven from their homes by intolerable noise from badly planned wind turbines. Has the law helped or hindered the public on the front line?  What is its place in the critically-urgent global and local response to climate change?

Three hundred years ago Jonathan Swift wrote that laws are like cobwebs.  They may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets through.

How true is that of an area of law that concerns everyone – the law relating to the environment we depend on for our existence?

12:00 a.m.

Jennie C Stephens

“Climate Justice Here and Now”

Jennie C. Stephens is a feminist climate justice scholar-activist based in Dublin. Her coalition-building work focuses on societal transformation and envisioning a hopeful future for all. She challenges the powerful actors and institutions who have been obstructing transformative climate action for decades and is a member of the Climate Justice Universities Union, a collective leveraging the transformative potential of higher education institutions to accelerate change toward a more just and healthy future.  She is the author of Climate Justice and the University (Hopkins University Press, 2024) and Diversifying Power: Why We Need Feminist, Antiracist Leadership on Climate and Energy (Island Press, 2020). 

2:00 p.m

Mike Allen

“Housing, Homelessness and the Struggle for Social Justice: A bed for the night.”

Over the last decade, the number of people who are homeless has quadrupled, with people from a far wider range of social background and circumstances becoming homeless, or at risk of losing their homes. Why has this happened? What impact does this have on the men, women and children who experience it? And what are the effects on our wider society? The talk will also set out some of the proposals about what can be done to solve the problem, and look at the various social movements which emerged over time to demand solutions.”

3:00 p.m.

Jack Lane

“Roger Casement-The Real and The Imagined”

Roger Casement remains a compelling figure in Irish history. This year is the 60th anniversary of his re-internment. He has become an icon for many causes. But icons are lifeless things and are deprived of context and thus any real historical meaning.  Jack Lane argues that Casement remains highly relevant.  After 49 of his 52 years as an active participant and onetime poster boy for the British Empire he became the most dangerous Irishman that the Empire ever faced. That is why he was hanged and that is why there has been a consistent attempt for over 100 years since to traduce his moral significance.  Jack will seek to put the record straight.

4:00 p.m.

Anne Twomey

Making Their Mark: Remarkable Cork Women and the contribution they made to Cork and Irish Society.

Anne Twomey will discuss the ground breaking role of four Cork women. Anna Haslam, suffragette leader, feminist and campaigner for political rights for women. Suzanne Rouviere Day, suffragette, writer and novelist who was among the first women to stand for election. Jennie Dowdall the first woman elected Lord Mayor of Cork (1959) and Eileen Desmond, the first female Minister of the senior Government Departments of Health and Social Welfare. 

5:00 p.m.

Luke Dineen

“Big Jim Larkin: His Life, Times and Ideology”

Big Jim Larkin lived in a tumultuous world during turbulent times. Like so many other radicals in the early years of the twentieth century, he believed that the dawn of a new age of the people was imminent, one in which the working classes, and not the captains of industry, would control the destinies of nations, including a free and independent Irish Republic.

Central to this vision was his belief in the ideology of syndicalism, the most popular brand of revolutionary socialism until the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. This talk will examine the various components of Larkin’s ideology until the 1913 Dublin Lockout, especially the impact that syndicalism had on him.

Note: This talk may take place using Zoom at the venue.

6:15 p.m.

Plaque events and the annual toast

With singers Martin Leahy and Dee Power.

Hear Martin’s new song “Mother Jones” just released.

Followed by the traditional whiskey toast to Mother Jones at her plaque.