Tonie Walsh

Tonie Walsh is a civil rights activist, historian and journalist

Throughout the 1980s, he was centrally involved in Dublin’s major LGBT resource, the Hirschfeld Centre, and also worked as a journalist on OUT (Ireland’s first, wholly commercial lesbian/gay periodical).

In 1985, at the age of 24, Tonie was the first openly gay person to stand for election to Dublin City Council. Although unsuccessful, he was asked by the Gay & Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) to run in the Dáil elections of 1989, highlighting the unjustness of existing anti-gay legislation.

Frustration at the lack of LGBT representation in the mainstream Irish media led him to establish GCN magazine, which he edited during its early years.

He was instrumental in founding the Irish Queer Archive in 1997, having reorganised the holdings of the National LGBT Federation and earlier archival collections dating from 1974. The archive was transferred to state ownership at the National Library of Ireland in 2008.

A former president of the National LGBT Federation, Tonie was honoured as grand marshal of the Dublin LGBTQ+ Pride parade in 2008.

He has been an outspoken critic of government inertia around new HIV and STI infections and for a number of years sat on the board of Gay Health Network.

On World AIDS Day 2016 at Maynooth University, Tonie launched a campaign to build an Irish AIDS Memorial. The Irish government is currently at the finishing stage of unveiling a national HIV/AIDS monument in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

Tonie's life of activism was turned into a piece of theatre by the critically acclaimed group, Thisispopbaby, and premiered at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre in 2018. A homage to friendship, family and community, especially during the AIDS pandemic; the one-man show was described by its director, Tom Creed, as "a meditation on grief".

In 2021, Tonie co-curated the Living With Pride programme of cultural activity for the National Library of Ireland and spent 2022 advising on an ambitious programme of digitisation for GCN magazine. He currently divides his time between Ireland and Turkey.