Joe Connolly:JOE CONNOLLY, who has died aged 86, was a former chairman of Dublin County Council and member of Dublin City Council, but is perhaps best known as the founder of the Community Games of which he became general secretary.
He first developed the idea of an organisation to provide healthy pursuits for children in his native Walkinstown, Dublin, in 1967. The initial games were held in 1968.
Roy Keane, Sonia O'Sullivan, Eamon Coghlan, Michael Carruth and Niall Quinn all took part in the Community Games.
Actor Colin Farrell won a gold medal in the Dublin games while representing Castleknock when the area team won the boys' relay U17 (4 x 100m) in 1992.
Charlie O'Connor TD, a former PRO for the games, this week described Joe Connolly as a great Irishman "who did something that endured for 40 years and which no doubt will continue".
Michael Curley, the national president of the Community Games, said: "Hundreds of thousands of children owe a deep debt of gratitude to Joe for his enormous contribution to their development and youthful enjoyment."
With Rev Martin Tierney of Swords and others, Connolly saw the project as a way of showing young people and their parents in Dublin's newly built estates how to discover their worth as neighbourhood residents, with communal interests, both socially and in competitive sports.
A secondary aim was to alert the government and local authorities to the need for recreational facilities for the many youngsters deprived of these amenities.
In 1968, 3,000 children from 24 areas of Dublin participated in preliminary competitions in their respective localities, with the active support of residents' and tenants' organisations. The finals were held at the John F Kennedy stadium, Santry.
Five years later, half a million children from around the country competed to qualify for the finals. Almost 2,400 finalists competed in what became known as the "Mini-Olympics" at Butlin's holiday camp in Mosney, Co Meath.
Today, in the individual events one competitor from each of the 32 counties qualifies for the national finals. In team events, one team from each of the four provinces qualifies. In addition to 20 athletic events and field games, the games include art, chess, draughts, choral singing and other cultural activities.
Connolly worked hard to secure funding for the games, which are currently sponsored by the Health Service Executive. They are administered by a small full-time staff, with 20,000 volunteers working on the ground. After 35 years at Mosney, next year they will move to the campus of the Athlone Institute of Technology.
A CIÉ clerk by occupation, Connolly was in his time an international boxer, a footballer - playing both Gaelic and soccer - and a hurler. In the 1980s he was seconded from CIÉ to work full time running the Community Games.
A lifelong member of the Labour Party, he served from 1960 to 1985 as a councillor on Dublin County Council and was in 1975 elected chairman. Elected to Dublin City Council in 1991, he unsuccessfully stood for election to Dáil Éireann in 1994.
He was in 1983 named as one of the People of the Year, and in 1988 during Dublin's Millennium year he was among a group of local activists to receive special awards from the city's lord mayor, alderman Carmencita Hederman.
Predeceased by his wife Vera, he is survived by his sons Brendan, Leonard and Joseph, and daughter Joyce.
Joseph (Joe) Connolly: born 1922; died October 17th, 2008