Nora Herlihy met Tomas O'Hogainwhen they  were students at the University College Dublin, and they went on to found the Dublin Central Co-Operative Society to reduce unemployment and emigration through forming worker co-operatives.
Herlihy was a student of the Liberal Arts Extramural Course at University College Dublin. There she met social economics student Tomas O'Hogain who invited her to a December 1953 meeting with Seamus MacEoin about the co-operative model. In March 1954 she and O'Hogain founded the Dublin Central Co-operative Society with the goal of reducing unemployment and emigration through the formation of worker co-operatives. 
