Council election candidate In 1999, he was a local election candidate for Dublin City Council, running for Fine Gael in the Ballymun–Whitehall local electoral area, but he failed to be elected. European Investment Bank In 2000, Nugent helped to stop the Irish government appointing a disgraced former judge, Hugh O'Flaherty, to the European Investment Bank. The Bank accepted Nugent's argument that they had a statutory duty to consider other candidates, and he forwarded the CV of Irish Senator and business editor Shane Ross. After public pressure, O'Flaherty withdrew his candidacy. Football related activism Nugent supports Bohemians and Leeds United football clubs. In 2002, he helped to prevent the Football Association of Ireland from selling broadcast rights for international matches to Sky television, but failed in an attempt to create a representative body for Irish football fans. In 2008, he was removed as a director of Bohemian Football Club after he questioned the viability of the club's growing expenditure. Atheist Ireland Nugent is the inaugural chairperson of Atheist Ireland, an advocacy group for an ethical and secular society free from superstition and supernaturalism. Its first AGM in 2009 outlined specific aims, including the removal of references to God from the Irish constitution, the introduction of a secular education system, and a campaign to encourage people to read the Bible. He represented Atheist Ireland at the first formal meeting between an Irish Prime Minister and members of an atheist advocacy group in the history of the State, where they argued how the Constitution, education system and laws and practices systemically discriminate against atheists. Atheism and religion Nugent was the opening speaker at the 2011 World Atheist Convention in Dublin, Ireland, which adopted the Dublin Declaration on Secularism and launched Atheist Alliance International, a newly restructured umbrella group for atheists worldwide. He told the convention that atheists were considered arrogant "because we do not believe that the entire universe was created for our benefit," and because they did not believe "that the most powerful being ever created a universe of over 100 billion galaxies, each with over 100 billion stars like our Sun, which existed for 14 billion years, and then picked one of the 100 billion galaxies and picked one of the 100 billion stars in that galaxy, and picked one planet revolving around that star and of the million species on that planet he picked one animal member of all those