Fingers

by Richard Curran

  Concern had hoped not to be forced to pursue Tarbett, and it had first invited him to repay all the disputed money. Tarbett had readily agreed, and the date of 21 November 1981 was set. It was a stalling tactic; and Fingleton told the court that in fact he had ‘no knowledge’ of any money being repaid. When the deadline passed, Fingleton called in the authorities.

  On Saturday 19 December 1981 Detective-Sergeant John Carty of the Fraud Squad arrested Tarbett for questioning. Tarbett’s plan to fly on Christmas Day to Australia for a holiday with his family had to be abruptly cancelled. He had a visitor’s visa for a year, further arousing Fingleton’s suspicions.

  Fingleton finished his testimony and allowed others to fill in more gaps for the prosecution.

  John Millett, Cork area organiser for Concern, said that a cheque for £20,000 dated 7 November 1978 and one for £7,500 dated 8 October 1980 had been sent to Concern. But, he said, he now knew they had made it only as far as Tarbett.

  Seán Duffy, secretary of the Agency for Personal Service Overseas, said he had sent Concern a cheque for £4,164 in July 1981, but this too had stopped at Tarbett.

  Ronald Smiley, chairperson of the Disaster Appeals Committee of Ireland, said he had sent a cheque for £84,000 to Concern in March 1980. The cheque had been paid out all right, on 14 April, but it had been done on the signature of Tarbett alone, and yet again the money had ended up in his bank account.

  As the evidence against him mounted that Wednesday afternoon, Tarbett, acting in his own defence, recalled Fingleton to the stand. He had some questions to ask of his former friend who, in Tarbett’s eyes, had turned against him.

  Fingleton had shown that when it came to wrongdoing or treating an organisation’s money as one’s own he was fully prepared to step up, investigate and try to ensure that the money was at least given back. When this didn’t happen Fingleton would not shirk his responsibilities in dealing with the matter.

  ——

  Fingleton’s own interest in Africa began in the late 1960s. Unmarried and without ties, he had travelled to Nigeria in 1968. Using his accountancy expertise, he had helped to administer the Catholic Bishops’ Fund in Nigeria. There he had got to know most of the significant personalities in Concern and overseas development.

  Based in the teeming capital of Lagos, he was part of an extended network of hundreds of Irish missionaries and lay people working there when a secessionist movement among the Igbo people in south-eastern Nigeria broke away and established the state of Biafra. The young Fingleton was part of a group of Irish people energised into action by the war and its consequent famine to begin helping not only on the ground but by embarking on a huge fund-raising drive in Ireland. It was an exciting time.

  ‘Biafra was the first famine on television,’ Tom Arnold, chief executive of Concern, recalled in an article in the Irish Times on 2 February 2008. ‘But stories coming home from Irish missionaries, into almost every parish in the country, also contributed to the massive response.’

  Among the Irish missionaries working in Biafra was the charismatic Father Raymond Kennedy of the Holy Ghost order. With his brother John O’Loughlin Kennedy and the latter’s wife, Kay, he set up Africa Concern in March 1968, which later became simply Concern. By the close of 1968 they had raised £3½ million for Biafra—equivalent to €64 million today—as the public responded emotionally to television and press reports of devastating famine.

  Michael Fingleton, while never based in Biafra during the war, still managed to play a part in the relief effort as well as helping with existing good works in Nigeria. The extent of his bravery is not clear. In an interview with the business magazine Strategy in July 1988 he described the experience as

  unreal, interesting, exciting and a great adventure. You’re not frightened when you’re involved and you were much more likely to get killed in a car crash than in the war. They drove on the wrong side of the road and if there was a gap, there was a car.

  In a profile of Fingleton in the Sunday Business Post in 1994 the journalist Ted Harding described what he called a ‘celebrated’ incident involving Fingleton as a sort of Indiana Jones figure. ‘Irish clergy were rounded up and imprisoned in the country’s Port Harcourt jail. Fingleton managed to cajole a pilot with government ties to fly him into the area. Coming off the plane, he was asked to open his case by security forces. The soldiers were stunned to see around £100,000 of bail money for the priests.’

  Contemporaries of Fingleton in Concern don’t recall him ever telling this story during the time they knew him—the 1970s to early 80s—so maybe it grew legs in the telling. Fingleton certainly never denied it: he was happy to foster the image of an adventurous, anti-establishment spirit. He regularly recalled Africa fondly in interviews about Irish Nationwide. For Strategy he described the Igbo people in awed terms. ‘They’re gracious, dignified, cultured and they’re both fatalistic and ambitious. They’ve an extraordinary attitude to life—they don’t worry about tomorrow and yet they’ve a voracious appetite for knowledge and they are highly educated. You’d see kids of 13 and 14 with a gun in one hand and an algebra in the other.’ This attitude, combining knowledge with power, fascinated Fingleton.

  Together with absorbing Nigerian culture Fingleton did a lot of growing up and left his three-year spell in a seminary firmly behind him. He tasted alcohol not only for the first time but also out of necessity, as canned beer was often a safer option when no clean water was available.

  The Nigerian sojourn left one other lasting mark on Fingleton: his trademark beard, of which he merrily quipped, ‘All imitators beware.’

  When he returned to Ireland in 1970 to embark on his banking and business career with Irish Nationwide he was eager to continue helping out with Concern. On 19 June 2002 Tony Farmar interviewed Fingleton in a meeting room on the top floor of Irish Nationwide when he was researching for the official history of Concern, Believing in Action. Farmar said he was still clearly proud of his involvement. ‘He obviously had contacts with Concern and Concern people because he became a member and later joined the board,’ Farmar recalled. He was one of the ring-leaders pushing for the charity to change in response to its rapid growth in what Farmar called a ‘fundamental conflict between the inspired enthusiast and the cool professional.’

  As time went on, Fingleton, always impatient, became an increasingly harsh critic of the Kennedy brothers, who had put the charity on the map but were far from management experts.

  By 1971 Concern was expanding from its base in Africa into East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, which was trying to break away from West Pakistan. A gigantic cyclone had hit the region, killing at least 300,000 people. This created a huge housing and sanitation problem, combined with a human tragedy. Concern, buoyed by its success in Nigeria, decided to help. It had substantial reserves, including £800,000 originally collected for Biafra, and a fund-raising network in Ireland. But there was disagreement about how effectively it was spending it.

  John O’Loughlin Kennedy, according to Believing in Action, engaged in ‘wild talk’ and was prepared to consider everything from a Biafra-style airlift to sending Concern’s ship, the Columcille, half way around the world to bring supplies. Deciding what to do created tensions within the board, and Fingleton and others were particularly angered by the proposed use of the Columcille, which they thought of as a needless and wasteful expense. Farmar recalled:

  They were all over the place. In one sense you have to think that Fingleton was smack right in wanting to tidy up Concern. Control it and discipline it and what have you. There is no question that the Kennedy brothers were very charismatic but with a slight tendency to trust in God. They had a slight tendency to just say let’s do it.

  By February 1972 feeling was so bad that Michael Doheny, a Holy Ghost priest, was forced to speak out in favour of the Kennedy brothers. ‘[Concern’s] whole concept and history is based on big thinking, daring decisions, adventurous action … It seems to me there is no shortage of “prudent” people in the w
orld, but a famine of courageous thinking.’ The comment was a critique of the Fingleton faction, who took a rather different view.

  On 10 May 1972 Fingleton and three others put their criticisms in writing. Believing in Action describes the letter, now buried in Concern’s archives, in a telling way. ‘The letter was aggressive beyond the heat typically generated in voluntary organisations,’ it concluded. Farmar, recalling reading the letter, said he couldn’t be certain that Fingleton was the principal mover behind it, but he suspected he was. The letter placed great emphasis on the high cost of administration at the time, which sucked up 35p of every pound raised.

  Fingleton was quite aggressive but I don’t know if he wrote it … It was a very awkward time when Concern didn’t know whether it was coming or going. It was a strong letter repeating criticisms about accounting stewardship. It was about the 35 per cent. Basically the business people were complaining bitterly about the amount of expenditure relative to cost, and the boat was part of it.

  Soon after the letter was written, Michael Doheny, fresh from the field, rode again to the Kennedys’ side. ‘I came back ten days ago full of the glory of Concern,’ he told a meeting of Concern’s executive. ‘I came home full of the joy of it and I see this letter. In God’s name we are spending energy and worry on negative things, let’s get together, let’s back up our team in Bangladesh.’

  The rows, however, did not end; and gradually the Fingleton faction gained more influence in Concern. ‘He felt the Kennedys had lost the plot,’ Farmar said. ‘[Fingleton] wanted to declericise the organisation and broaden it into a more secular thing with proper plans and financial base.’

  In 1974 Fingleton was among twenty-two people selected from the ranks of the clergy, former volunteers and business to join the council of Concern at its annual general meeting in Dublin. ‘The council of Concern when he came in were people who had worked overseas,’ Farmar said.

  They knew from their personal experience what was required but they weren’t necessarily businesslike and quite a lot of them at that time were priests or religious. They felt—and this was how Fingleton put it to me—they slightly felt the lay people had a duty to supply the cash for them to do the good. That was the deal. That was how he put it to me.

  Concern, as a result, saw its income rise and fall in response to particular crises. Fingleton wanted to make its funds more stable.

  His idea was to create a reserve and stop the boom and bust nature of the income. He wanted a three month reserve of expenditure in the kitty as it were. That was his plan.

  Éanna Johnson, the then chairman, said:

  I had to manage the transition from highly charismatic, sometimes erratic founders into an organisation with goals and achievements. That transition was made in the mid-70s. Organisations who don’t make that transition don’t survive.

  There was some friction. Around that time an article appeared in Hibernia magazine that was highly critical of Concern. Michael would have been one of the ones who agreed with that article. It was part of my job to steer things away from personalities.

  Fingleton’s push for a more businesslike approach was reinforced when, in 1977, Alex Tarbett, a respected businessman and publisher, became chief executive of Concern. ‘Tarbett was the one who refocused the thing,’ Farmar said. ‘Concern had become less effective. There was a sort of disillusion, and Tarbett provided it with a new drive and direction. Fingleton supported that.’

  Tarbett was a marked departure from what went before. He had trustworthy credentials as a former student priest who studied in Maynooth in the 1940s, where he befriended the late Cardinal William Conway and many other members of the clergy. He had spent six years with the publishing house of C. J. Fallon and later joined the London publishers Geoffrey Chapman. His biggest coup, with the help of his friend Cardinal Conway, was to secure the rights to publish missals and other religious books in numerous international markets. He was feted in business and very much a friend of the Church.

  His record in business also included running the retail, office equipment and publishing division of the Smurfit Group, then one of Ireland’s most dynamic businesses. He left after ‘personality differences’, which was not that unusual among the employees of Michael Smurfit, who was a brilliant businessman but a hard taskmaster.

  ‘Alex was very well connected and a smooth man. He was going to, and clearly did, change the scale of the thing,’ Farmar said. At his first annual general meeting as chief executive, in 1977, Tarbett described passionately his vision for the charity, which was then nine years old. Back from a visit to Bangladesh, where Concern had forty-four volunteers working in the field, he said: ‘If the public at large could see what I have seen in my very short visit, it would have no hesitation in saying “we must do more for Concern”.’ He described in vivid detail the scale of the catastrophe they were facing. ‘Our engineers and agriculturists are today fighting a battle against time to ensure that vital crops will not be washed away in the next monsoon, to ensure that communication by road is possible from one stricken area to the other, to ensure that our nurses and doctors are dealing with malnutrition and helping to eradicate disease.’

  It was powerful stuff, and the Irish people, including Fingleton, reacted to it. Despite his determination to expand Irish Nationwide, Fingleton decided to become even more involved in charity work.

  Towards the end of 1977 he took over as chairman from Éanna Johnson. ‘[Fingleton] was very interested, very committed and very outspoken. I like people who speak their minds,’ Johnson recalled in 2012.

  Fingleton found in Tarbett a kindred spirit who was interested in expanding Concern in a more professional way. The Kennedy brothers were now far less influential—but, according to John O’Loughlin Kennedy in 2012, they did not bear Fingleton any ill will for squeezing them out.

  [Fingleton] was chairman of Concern during a very difficult period and he was good. He could be very demanding. That was the Michael Fingleton I knew. He was a little bit gruff at times but behind the crusty exterior he wasn’t as crusty inside as he appeared outside. He could have a short way of answering but apart from that he was a splendid person.

  As Tarbett and Fingleton worked together, Concern’s income tripled, to £2.3 million, while spending on non-field work was reduced to below 20 per cent.

  The two men liked each other. They got to know each other on trips abroad, including a visit to Tanzania in 1978 to meet its first president, Julius Nyerere. At the time Nyerere was widely seen as a progressive African leader, a vocal opponent of colonialism and apartheid who helped found the Organisation of African Unity. (His reputation, like that of his visitors, would in time be tarnished as he turned to brutal prison camps that were used to quell dissent.)

  As Concern grew rapidly under Tarbett, Fingleton hit on the idea of introducing tax relief to encourage more giving—an idea he would later promote in the 1990s and onwards for property in Ireland. In January 1981 Fingleton called for tax breaks in the Irish Times and suggested that the state should give more money to Concern, rather than to governments in the developing world or non-Irish aid agencies. ‘My personal view is that if the same money was given to voluntary organisations such as Concern, we would spend it to greater advantage. We have greater flexibility, greater experience and expertise.’ They were words that within less than a year would prove questionable.

  With Tarbett’s alleged fraud uncovered and in the process of being investigated, Fingleton faced a difficult task preparing his chairman’s report for 1981. As ever, he didn’t shirk from presenting the hard facts.

  Last year has been the most difficult that Concern has ever seen. There has been a change in top management and in addition we are now in the midst of a depression the worst in 30 years.

  Finally we have suffered the effects of the publicity from the impending court case which in itself has caused a great deal of work and worry for all members of Concern staff, the executive committee and council. It is evident tha
t from here on it will be much more difficult to obtain local funding in Ireland. This should only encourage us to redouble our efforts.

  We are advised that we will be able to recover funds if it can be established [that] they were misdirected. Members will be aware that the delay in calling the AGM was due to the necessity of calling the auditors to investigate these alleged irregularities.

  Together with Father Aengus Finucane, Concern’s brilliant and charismatic new chief executive, Fingleton now had to hold the charity together and to weather the coming storm of bad publicity. On 3 August 1983 the Irish Times reported that fears had been expressed at the July council meeting that its reputation had been damaged badly.

  In a statement to the paper, the council, chaired by Fingleton, sought to assure the public that its problems were firmly in the past. ‘Concern has always considered itself to be fully accountable to the public for all funds donated and entrusted to it for its work in the Third World,’ it said. It assured the public that it had an accounts policy that, apart from its own personnel, was backed up by professional accountants who provided regular and detailed financial institutions.

  Ironically, as we will see in relation to his own stewardship of Irish Nationwide in later years, Fingleton was keen to stress that the correct procedures now existed for ensuring that an isolated incident could never be repeated.

  Meanwhile Father Finucane embarked on a national campaign in parishes and communities throughout the country to assure its supporters that Concern was still a charity they could trust. ‘Alex did a lot of good work while he was there. He had vision,’ Johnson recalled. ‘It was a serious shock, a very serious shock when money went missing.’