Michael Fingleton was “an intensely private man, almost an enigma”, his funeral heard on Friday, despite his public persona and “active pursuit of publicity to grow his business over the years”.
His son William told those who gathered at St Anne’s parish church in Shankill that there had been a lot of vilification of his father in the media but “he had lived many men’s lives and lived them well”.
Fingleton had, he noted, been born in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo in 1938 and grown up there at a time when it would not have made for the most comfortable of lives.
“Like many of his peers of that time in rural Ireland, he would have been encouraged to join the priesthood as it gave some prestige to families at that time”.
RM Block
“It wasn’t the chastity or poverty that caused him to leave,” the congregation heard he later told his daughter, Eileen. “He could have easily lived with that. It was the obedience. He simply didn’t like being told what to do.”
He subsequently lived a colourful life, William said. While working for the charity, Concern he was flown into a rebel-held village in Biafra at one point “by a crazy Italian pilot with a suitcase of money” on a mission to free some priests and nuns who were being held hostage.
Fingleton would be the subject of kidnap threats himself, during his days as a prominent businessman.
William fondly recounted him arriving home late from work after having travelled around the country and the children trying to sneak a share of the Chinese meal he had brought home with him.
He had by then earned degrees in law and commerce and qualified as both a barrister and an accountant, it was recalled. He would subsequently tell his children they were privileged to go to university without having to hold down full-time jobs at the time.
He joined what was then the Irish Independent Building Society, “a small operation”, in 1971 and built it into the “multibillion euro financial institution [Irish Nationwide Building Society] that helped to drive economic development after the years of stagnation during the 1970s and 1980s”.
“Many titans of industry past and present owe our father some gratitude for making or saving their businesses when times were tough,” said his son.
Irish Nationwide ultimately collapsed in 2008 with a loan book of €8.18 billion and cost the government €5.4 billion to bail out.
William Fingleton recalled a kind man “with a work ethic second to none”. “He could be a tough taskmaster but there was a gentleness to him.”
He told the story of his father and members of the family being held at knifepoint while on a holiday in Rio de Janeiro. His father knocked the assailant to the ground, disarming him, but then helped hm up and asked if he was okay, saying afterwards “he was only a poor scrawny fella trying to survive”.
He had been, his son said, a massive fan of sport. Having survived a scare in June when the family thought he had been about to die – he had been unwell since a stroke in 2018 – he got to watch the World Cup and Mayo’s All Ireland win, both of which brought him huge pleasure. He cheered for any county from the West, the congregation heard, as Sligo rarely did well enough to require his continued support.
Among those in attendance at the funeral were the developers Seán Dunne, Michael O’Flynn and Paddy Kelly, as well as Michael Lowry TD and former politician Conor Lenihan.
He is survived by his wife Eileen, to whom he was married for 54 years, and his children, Anne, William, Eileen and Michael.
