Fintan Farrell: Campaigner had a huge impact on EU poverty policy

Born: March 9th, 1961

Died: December 24th, 2022

Fintan Farrell, who has died aged 61, was an Irish advocate for the rights of Travellers and, especially, people living with poverty, who became a significant influencer of EU policy from 2001 to 2013 as director of the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN), an NGO sponsored by the European Commission and with headquarters in Brussels.

A gay man from Ardclough, Co Kildare, Farrell was someone who would have struggled to flourish as he did in an earlier, repressive, isolated Ireland, from which progressive social reform, and Irish membership of the EU, brought liberation to him personally, and to his talents.*

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A common theme of the many tributes to him was the depth of his empathy for others, combined with excellent networking skills and an ability to get quickly to the core of issues, and then access solutions to them, including, vitally, funds from the highest levels of the EU.

After completing his Leaving Certificate at Naas CBS, Farrell showed both an adventurous and egalitarian spirit, spending more than a year as a volunteer with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, now Kolkata. Back in Ireland he spent four years as a counsellor at the Teach Bhríde centre in Tullow, Co Carlow, an holistic development and educational centre.

In the late 1980s, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with initiatives to help the Travelling community, he became involved in community development in Tullamore, Co Offaly, focusing on ensuring that Travellers themselves controlled and directed organisations for their own social and economic growth.* In 1990 he and others set up the Irish Traveller Movement (ITM) to give effect to these ideas, and he became its director, a position he held until 2000. During this time, he also completed a diploma in youth and community development at Maynooth University.

In 2000 the EU had launched its Social Inclusion Strategy, a comprehensive initiative on employment and social inclusion. In this process, Farrell soon became a very influential actor

While at the ITM, there were notable advances for Travellers, including the setting-up of the Task Force for the Travelling Community in 1995, the Traveller Accommodation Act of 1997 and the Equal Status Act in 2000. While at the ITM, Farrell also became active at a European level with the EAPN, becoming its president for four years in 1996, before joining the EAPN headquarters in 2001 as a policy officer and then its director a year later.

He arrived at a propitious time. In 2000 the EU, as part of a 10-year process, had launched its Social Inclusion Strategy, a comprehensive initiative on employment and social inclusion. In this process, Farrell soon became a very influential actor, gaining in consequence an encyclopedic knowledge of how the EU and the European Parliament function.

Marian Harkin, Independent TD for Sligo-Leitrim, who was an MEP from 2004 to 2013, told The Irish Times this week that thereafter, with every five-yearly review conducted by the EU into social policy, if there were any reviews that identified needs for legislative change, “Fintan was central” to it, adding that it was very helpful for an organisation – such as the EAPN – to know how the EU works. “Fintan had that and he could be quite specific about things.”

Farrell was especially involved in the development of the European Minimum Income Network. Seizing his moment carefully, during the Belgian presidency of the EU in 2010, which that year was also the International Year Against Poverty, Farrell asked veteran Belgian MEP Anne van Lancker to write a draft for an EU directive on the subject. Although the EU did not accept her ideas then, pressure has been consistently applied since by the EAPN, an influence that was finally recognised by the Council of the European Union at their meeting on December 8th last year, when they officially issued a recommendation to all EU governments to draw up a minimum income policy for their respective states.

Anne van Lancker said this week: “I am convinced that... [this] would never have been agreed without Fintan’s activism... It certainly took a person like Fintan to add the strong power of convincing testimonies and the mobilising force of advocacy to really make change possible.”

For his funeral service, he had left instructions that a conventional funeral Mass was not to be celebrated, instead asking that his ashes be interred in his mother’s grave following a funeral Mass at such a time that the church accepted gay people equally

Part of this advocacy was a remarkable two-bus tour to all EU capitals in 2018, and four other states as well, over 66 days, which Farrell conceived and organised, living on the vehicles himself for much of the time. In each city, EAPN volunteers handed out leaflets, met media, politicians and governments, and put on shows involving street performers to draw attention to the ideas of the European Minimum Income Network.

Even after leaving the EAPN, Farrell continued to chair the EU-sponsored annual meetings of People Experiencing Poverty, where he especially encouraged participation of people from marginalised minority groups.

Farrell was a deeply spiritual man, spending a year studying theology at the Mt Oliver Institute of Religious Education in 1987 and 1988, and loving the funeral ceremonies of the Catholic Church, even while remaining very critical of its teachings on gay people. Specifically, for his funeral service at the Catholic parish church in Ardclough, he had left instructions that a conventional funeral Mass was not to be celebrated, instead asking that his ashes be interred in his mother’s grave, following a funeral Mass at such a time that the church accepted gay people equally.

Fintan Farrell was one of seven children of John and Vera (nee McCormack) Farrell, and is survived by his sisters Christine, Dolores, Bernadette and Angela; and his brothers Oliver and Padraig; and by a huge circle of friends, especially his closest friend, Yves Geens of Belgium.

*This article was amended on Thursday, March 2nd, 2023