[1] Evolving out of an earlier group called the New Ireland Movement.
The group made a detailed submission to the New Ireland Forum in 1983.
Other figures include labour activist Jack McDowell, ecology campaigner Peter Emerson,[2] Philip Orr, and Francis Gallagher.
A number of its members actively support the De Borda Institute[3] and in 1986 some of the de borda's electoral systems were tried out during the New Ireland Groups Peoples' Convention as an exercise in consensus decision making.
Its members regularly make contributions to the media and presentations to government commissions.