Robert Farnan

Robert P. Farnan (1898 – 7 January 1962)

He was born at Batton, Castlemore, County Kildare and was educated at CBS Athy, Castleknock College and at the Royal University of Ireland.

Éamon de Valera's son Terry wrote in 2006, "Perhaps of all my father’s friends and colleagues none were so close, nor had his trust as had Robert Farnan." He warned de Valera that his "external association" alternative to the Anglo-Irish Treaty was too subtle to persuade the public. In September 1922, his house was the venue for a meeting between de Valera and Richard Mulcahy which tried in vain to halt the Irish Civil War that the Treaty had started; it is mentioned in As I Was Going Down Sackville Street, Oliver St. John Gogarty's memoir of the time.

In 1926 he became a founder member of the Fianna Fáil party and in 1938 de Valera nominated him to the newly formed Seanad Éireann as one of his eleven Taoiseach's nominees to the Seanad. He mentored Éamon de Valera, Jnr, who also became a gynaecologist.