Michael Tierney (politician)
Michael Tierney was Professor of Greek at University College Dublin from 1923 to 1947 and President of UCD between 1947 and 1964, and was also a Cumann na nGaedheal politician.Biography
Tierney was born in 1894 in the townland of Esker, near Castleblakeney, County Galway, the son of Michael Tierney, a farmer, and Bridget Finn. He attended St Joseph's College, Ballinasloe, and entered UCD in October 1911. He graduated in 1914 with a first-class honours degree in Ancient Classics. Two years later he was awarded his MA degree, and he worked as an assistant lecturer in Greek from 1918 to 1919 and 1920 to 1922. In 1917 he won a National University of Ireland travelling studentship in Classics and used it to study in the Sorbonne, British School at Athens and Berlin from 1919 to 1921. He was appointed to the Chair of Greek in 1922.
Tierney was elected a Cumann na nGaedheal Teachta Dála for Mayo North in a by-election in 1925 and for the NUI constituency in 1927, a seat he held until 1932.
Tierney came to corporatism through a study of Catholic social thought, and through an analysis of continental systems of corporatism, particularly those of Portugal and Austria. He was an early member of the Army Comrades Association and, along with Ernest Blythe, encouraged Eoin O'Duffy to become the leader. Tierney suggested the name "Fine Gael" for the new coalition between his party, the Centre Party and the Blueshirts.
He was a member of Seanad Éireann from 1938 to 1944.
He was the prime mover behind the transfer of UCD to its present site at Belfield. On 28 June 1923, he married Eibhlín MacNeill, daughter of Eoin MacNeill. He wrote a biography of his father-in-law, Eoin MacNeill: scholar and man of action.
