Thomas Joseph “T. J.” Maher, farmers’ leader and public representative, dies on April 19, 2002, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, following a short illness.

Maher is born on April 29, 1922, at Castlemoyle, Boherlahan, Cashel, County Tipperary, the seventh child of Thomas Maher, farmer, and his wife Julianne Maher. Raised on the family’s forty-five-acre holding and educated locally at Ardmayle national school and at the Christian Brothers school and VEC school in Cashel, he takes over the farm in 1948 when ill health forces his father into retirement. He subsequently enlarges it to 120 acres. Mechanically adept, a talented sportsman, and a member of Cashel Dramatic Society, he joins Macra na Feirme and is a founder member of the National Farmers’ Association (NFA) in January 1955.

Maher is a member and chairman of the dairy committee of the NFA before coming to national attention through his participation in the historic farmers’ rights march to Dublin led by Rickard Deasy (October 7-19, 1966), part of the militant campaign for fairer agricultural prices and for reform of taxation and rates on farmland. His part in the subsequent three-week sit-down protest and meeting with incoming minister Neil Blaney, at the Department of Agriculture, confirms his reputation as a tenacious campaigner for agricultural causes. In August 1967, shortly after 100 farmers have served prison sentences for withholding rates, he succeeds Deasy as NFA president. Charismatic, articulate, and decisive, he also has a strong sense of personal responsibility, which governs his expectations of colleagues and associates. With exhausting rounds of travel and meetings, he is impossible to ignore and grist to the media mill, with his apparently impromptu but, in reality, carefully rehearsed speeches criticising politicians, parties, bureaucracy, and tardy national policy. He warns of national economic failure unless government and public services take radical modernising initiatives. He is at once nationalist, internationalist, and a revolutionary campaigner for change, an idealistic firebrand who is essentially conservative in social matters.

Maher’s campaign for agriculture is tempered by a wider interest in the social and economic future of Ireland ahead of crucial negotiations for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). He becomes a household name, gadfly of bureaucrats and hero of farmers. In November 1967 he attends the European Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers in Rome as an advance action prior to taking part in the subsequent negotiations leading to Ireland’s “entry to Europe” in January 1973. He is re-elected president of the NFA in 1970.

Amalgamating the NFA with several of the agricultural producers’ organisations, Maher oversees its reemergence as the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) in January 1971 and remains president until 1976. Strengthened by his pro-European leadership, the IFA withstands the counter-propaganda which, in the referendum of May 1972, urges rejection of the EEC on economic, social, and religious grounds. Despite his own moderately conservative social views and unequivocal opposition to abortion in Ireland, his commitment to European integration is not in question.

Maher is a director of prestigious state-sponsored bodies including Bord Bainne, the Irish Sugar Company, and the B & I shipping line. He also serves six terms between 1976 and 1983 as president of the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS). Such relative sinecures are balanced by adherence to humanitarian causes that occupy most of his subsequent life. Passionate about practical support for developing countries, he becomes a founder and chairman of Bóthar, the Irish self-help relief agency for supply of livestock overseas. He urges prison reform and supports Amnesty International in its prisoners’ rights campaigns. Running as an independent candidate, he is elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Munster in 1979, beating the strong Fine Gael candidate Alan Dukes. Describing himself as a public representative rather than a politician, he sits in the Liberal and Democratic parliamentary group and continues to fly agricultural and other kites as a non-party deputy. Typically, he criticises the scale of Irish embassies abroad, suggesting alternative teams of trade and tourism personnel. He advocates fairer agricultural policies towards developing countries in spite of prevailing European attitudes of self-interest, and urges the transfer of Northern Ireland from British jurisdiction to European protectorate status. At home he seeks all-party consensus on economic recovery from the depressed condition of the mid 1980s, well intentioned and lonely causes that fail to draw significant political support.

Maher’s habit of traveling with tools to unlock sealed hotel windows is an example of his sometimes eccentric practicality. His unsuccessful attempt to win a Dáil seat for Tipperary South in the 1981 Irish general election postpones his return to Ireland, although he is twice reelected an MEP before retiring in 1994. During his time in Strasbourg he is a quaestor of the European Parliament and a member of its committees on rural development, regions and petitions. He advocates decentralisation of power in Ireland while also criticising local authorities for laxity in their commitment to environmental protection.

For all his outspokenness, Maher is widely respected for the courageous positions he adopts. When time permits, he is an avid reader of history. He maintains his rural pastimes, especially attendance at Gaelic sports, where he can test the political pulse of his constituents. Following a short illness, he dies on April 19, 2002, aged 79, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. He is buried at Boherlahan cemetery following a Requiem Mass, celebrated by his surviving brother, the Rev. Michael Maher CSSp (a former veterinary surgeon), and his cousin Denis.

Maher marries Elizabeth (Betty) Kennedy from Bansha, near Cashel, on January 8, 1958. They live at Castlemoyle and have one daughter, Julianne, and two sons, Thomas and Denis. His brother James (Jamesie), who predeceases him in October 1975, had been a medical consultant at St. Vincent’s and consultant surgeon to the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU).

(From: “Maher, Thomas Joseph” by Patrick Long, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)