Ireland has a long history of legendary women, from Aine the goddess of sun to warrior queen Meadbh and exalted one Brigid, who we still celebrate today.
While their stories are epic, women and girls across the country are still putting their heads above the parapet for what matters.
So this International Women’s Day we are celebrating the environmental trailblazers giving their all to protect Mother Ireland for future generations.
READ MORE: International Women's Day: Activist celebrates some of Ireland's most inspiring women
And we have lots to celebrate, from former President and climate justice advocate Mary Robinson to Green Party MEP and former Greenpeace activist, Grace O’Sullivan.
Sea-lovers Flossie Donnelly and her mum Harriet are cleaning our beaches; scientists like Dr Cara Augustenberg, Prof Hannah Daly and Sadhbh O’Neill generously share their expertise.
Marie Donnelly holds the Government to account as chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council while women activists up and down the country fight for causes that impact their communities and the country as a whole.
This day is theirs.
We have spoken to some of these inspirational women in a bid to shine a light on their efforts but also highlight the fights they still hope to win.
Green Party MEP Grace O’Sullivan may be fighting for the environment in Brussels now, but her story begins as Ireland’s first female surf champion.
The Waterford native, who celebrates her birthday today, then wrote to Greenpeace asking if she could join and thinks her skill on the water helped her clinch a role with them.
Grace told us: “I was on crew on the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed. I was 23 at the time.
“We converted the ship... and we sailed from Florida to the Bahamas and through the Panama Canal... up to Hawaii and up through the Pacific Ocean to the Marshall Islands where we worked with communities there who were impacted as a result of the American nuclear testing programme.
“We relocated them to another island that was less contaminated.. then we sailed from Kiribati to Vanuatu into Auckland, New Zealand.
“That’s why people sometimes talk to me about hope - at the time we talked about the non-nuclear proliferation treaty (Star Wars).
“We were trying to demilitarise the nuclear superpowers and trying to convince smaller nations to use their voices in the UN to say they don’t want their islands used for nuclear testing.
“Then we sailed into Auckland.. and the French Government bombed the ship in harbour.
“Half of us had gone onshore for a bit of rest and half were on board.
“The first bomb went off at midnight... water started coming onboard - the captain gave the order to abandon ship.
“Fernando Pereira, was our photographer onboard - a Portuguese photographer and father of two kids.
“The first bomb had gone and they were all up on the quayside going ‘what the hell’.
“Fernando jumped back down to get his camera, because that’s how he made his living, and the second bomb exploded.
“The water started pouring on and he drowned. That was the 10th of July 1985 and that was so shocking for us.
“We were green ecologists for peace and justice in the 80s - it was a huge story.
“My parents wanted me to come home [saying] ‘you’ve done your bit’.
“But I managed to get on another smaller Greenpeace yacht and four of us sailed across the southern Pacific ocean into the test site of the French Government in absolute defiance of what they had done.
“This was in October, only a few weeks after the bombing.
“There were huge investigations going on around the globe on who’d bombed the peace ship.
“We sailed into the test zone and were taken as prisoners for seven days... onboard a French military vessel off the islands of Tahiti.
Then I was deported back to Ireland.
“I thought this is what you do - you grow up and head off on a Greenpeace ship,” Grace added.
“There were eight of us and then my parents.
“My father was a businessman in Waterford city and had a dairy farm and then in the summer we had a small boat in the pier and we would go mackerel fishing.
“I said to my brother recently, ‘did mammy ever worry about me?’ and he said ‘she was just so busy with all of us - the fact you were off on the high seas was just another of us off doing something’.
“We went to Antarctica in 1986 and set up a base camp there,” she continued.
“It was nicknamed ‘Grace base’ for a long time.
“We lobbied and campaigned to have Antarctica declared a world park free from extraction [and] the exploitation for fossil fuels and minerals.
“There had been environmental disasters at sea - oil spills and that - and we were saying ‘please let us leave one area of the world for biodiversity’.
“I went back to Antarctica in 1989 when the Japanese Government was killing Minke whales for what they called ‘scientific research’.
“We argued that benign research could be done and you do not have to kill species.
“We put pressure on the Japanese whalers and I was one of the people sitting in the inflatable between the harpoon and the whale at times.
“It was a very cruel killing of these great species.
“At the time a number of the great whale species were threatened with extinction and now we see them recovering.
“We are seeing awareness and the need for protection, conservation and restoration of degraded habitats growing more and more and that gives me a sign of hope.”
Grace’s high seas days might be behind her, but the politician is still fighting for more sustainable fishing practices, climate action and plastic reduction among other issues.
Marie Donnelly, chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council, spent 30 years with the European Commission working on renewables strategy and is now pushing the Government to be more ambitious on the climate crisis.
She was also first Chairperson of Renewable Energy Ireland, is a member of the Governance Committee of MaREI and a Senior Advisor in Brussels to global comms agency, Hume Brophy.
The 67-year-old Kildare native says she would encourage girls to study STEM subjects as they open all sorts of doors.
Marie is most proud of “the fact Ireland has such high [climate] ambitions.. founded on science”.
“Climate action is both understood and accepted by people but it’s a question of really strong leadership at this point in time” - both locally and nationally.
Marie says the Government “still needs to deliver a limited number of really high impact measures that will bend the curve of emissions this year”.
“We have to completely revisit our electricity system because we are now using coal, oil and diesel which we left behind in 2015 and we have let the ball drop on security of supply.”
Dr Cara Augustenborg’s environmental journey was inspired by her parents, who were cleaning up nuclear waste on a reservation near their home.
The 44-year-old scientist and mum of one is part of the team that helps Friends of the Earth hold the government to account every
with their environmental report card.
She is most proud of her role in the push to get everyday folks to ask politicians about what they are doing about the climate crisis during the last election.
“Empowering people that they didn’t have to be experts to raise it... was hugely powerful and politicians said climate change was in the top five issues raised on the doorstep.
“I now see it translated into national policy.”
Now she would like to see the Government act on emissions which “are not going down”.
“We can have all the policies in the world but if that curve isn’t bending we are not solving the problem. We have to start acting like this is an emergency.”
Mum and daughter duo Harriet and Flossie Donelly are the driving force behind educational marine charity, Flossie and The Beach Cleaners.
Their journey started on a trip to Thailand where young Flossie was shocked by plastic pollution in the water.
When they returned home they saw we had the same problem to set about trying to clean up our beaches.
Flossie, 15, said: “It’s really incredible to be able to reunite people with things we find on the beach.”
Now they would like the Government to make climate a “core subject” from junior school to senior school.
Harriet, 51, said: “Kids are the ones that learn and accept things more quickly.
“We know from our workshops that kids just go away so armed with knowledge about little things they can do to help save the planet from cleaning the beaches to shopping in swap shops.
“If you had environmentalism as a core subject in a practical form it would be a really nice way to introduce it to kids.”
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