“We want climate action that builds equality and gives people a sense of belonging for the future.” So says Sean McCabe, head of climate justice and sustainability at Bohemian Football Club (Bohs FC).
He was speaking at the recent Environmental Protection Agency circular economy conference and we caught up with him and the team behind what they claim to be “the first climate justice operation in world football”.
Sitting around a table in their Phibsboro Tower offices in the North Dublin shopping centre are the three climate action staff members – McCabe, Katlyne Armstrong, India Ryan, Bohs FC long-term member and trade unionist, Scott Millar and chairwoman of the Phibsboro Climate Club, Céline Reilly.
They are all equally passionate about the “community wealth building” model from Cleveland, Ohio and the Mondragón Co-operative movement in the Basque Country of Spain, both of which have inspired their climate action agenda.
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The team suggests that many commercially owned football clubs have lost their values, while a membership-owned club, such as Bohs FC, can help foster a more inclusive set of values.
“What are the biggest threats now? They are xenophobia, racism, homophobia and the climate crisis. Inequality is damaging our society, so you can’t act on the climate crisis and ignore inequality. For us, it’s about combining community and wellbeing with climate action,” McCabe adds.
Dalymount Park, the club’s football ground in Phibsboro, has its own history to tell. Competing in the Premier Division, Bohemians is the fourth most successful club in the League of Ireland football history.
Celtic Tiger-era deals to sell the Dalymount Park stadium while developing a new one elsewhere fell through. In 2015, Dublin City Council bought the stadium and planning permission to install a new 8,000 capacity venue, a new pitch, community facilities and a public plaza granted in February 2024.
In October, Bohemians’ chief operating officer Daniel Lambert said that 2026 will be the club’s final season at Dalymount Park before it undergoes redevelopment.
Under Lambert’s leadership, the club has associated itself with Palestinian nationalism, anti-racism, as well as refugee and homelessness advocacy (including their Christmas Toy Drive for children in direct provision), while drawing inspiration from clubs such as FC St Pauli in Germany, a club known for its anti-fascist identity.
The climate action team has also linked in with Europe’s football network, leading collaborations with clubs in Spain, the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany and Belgium (eg Real Betis, FC Twente, Ferencváros, SV Werder Bremen, Club Brugge) through the Football for Climate Justice project.
Scott Millar says that it’s about thinking of a football club as a mass group of people with a shared sense of belonging and purpose. “Fifteen years ago, Bohs had 600 members. Now, there are nearly 3,000 members. We have worked with prisoners in Mountjoy Prison and organised buses for people to come to matches from direct provision,” he says.
Millar also believes that such initiatives have kept anti-racism and anti-immigrant sentiments out of the club. “We have managed to politicise our fan base into more constructive avenues,” he says.
McCabe explains that the climate action programme began with a “deep listening” exercise to determine what people living in the locality needed and wanted most.
With funding from AIB and the Department of the Environment via Pobal, they set about discovering what climate actions fans of Bohs FC could access, from retrofitting to energy efficiency, electric mobility and food security.
“We discovered that over 40 per cent of people around Dalymount Park had problems with their energy bills,” McCabe explains.
So in 2023, a skills programme, called Spark, was run with Dublin city ETB to offer people eight-week courses on everything from bicycle mechanics to energy efficiency to off-grid solar energy in their education space in the Phibsboro Tower.
More than 140 people have completed the eight-week courses to date, with many more ready to start a new batch of courses, which will include green building skills.
Jamie McGivern helps run the classes with India Ryan. “I’m a big Bohs fan. I want to do as much as possible to make this area a better place to walk around – to make it cleaner and healthier place to live and be in,” he says.
Other projects in development include a bicycle lending library and a lending library for power tools and other occasionally used items, such as camping equipment.
“We have the insurance in place. We have the software for bookings. We just need the premises to set it up in,” says India Ryan.
The recent sale of Phibsboro Shopping Centre means that Bohs’ climate action team are on the lookout for new premises.
A green building skills pre-apprenticeship course for young people in Bohs Football Academy who don’t make it to professional football level is another ambition. As are plans for local “care and repair” teams offering householders the opportunity to do minor energy upgrades in their homes.
This bottom-up approach is central to their philosophy of upskilling people in an effort to build new co-operative enterprises in the community as a means of keeping wealth within the area.
In September 2025, former president Mary Robinson, a climate activist on the international stage, and US senator Bernie Sanders visited the Spark programme to give their blessing for the ambitious plans to set up a food co-operative (to supply local school meals), a solar co-operative, a laundry co-operative and a mutual insurance company.
“The skills to create co-operatives have disappeared from Irish society, and we need to re learn them. These campaigns are one of the defining features of the club,” says McCabe.
He believes setting up co-operatives will keep money in the locality and encourage reinvestment in Phibsboro.
Reilly says there is already strong climate and biodiversity action in the Phibsboro, Cabra and Stoneybatter areas and Bohemians’ Football Club, the Tidy towns and climate and biodiversity clubs all co-operate well.
“Each of these three areas in Dublin 7 are sustainable energy communities and we have citizen-led house renovations with templates for moving from E1 to BI in our energy master plans,” she explains.
An analysis of carbon emissions in Phibsboro’s housing, commercial, and public buildings stock has found that retrofitting and installing solar panels could reduce emissions in the area by one-third.
Bohs FC climate action group is also keen to see how proposed updates to the public procurement directives by the European Commission in 2026 will transpire.
“It’s about living-wage jobs so that people can maintain their standards of living in areas like this,” says McCabe. The proposed updates on public procurement are expected to mainstream non-price criteria, including sustainability and resilience, to meet climate and social goals.
