Gallagher, Patrick (1870–1966), cooperative organiser, was born 25 December 1870 at Cleendra, in the Rosses district of Co. Donegal, one of two sons and seven daughters of Pat Gallagher, small farmer and migrant labourer, and his wife, a Boyle from Falmore, Co. Donegal. The family lived in a one-roomed cottage on reclaimed bog, and dire poverty ensured that Gallagher's education at the local school in Roshine would be short-lived. At the age of nine he was sent to a hiring fair at Strabane, Co. Tyrone, where he was hired by a farmer at a price of £3 for six months. Until the age of 16 he was hired out to various farms in the Lagan valley, and then travelled to Scotland working as a farm labourer, building labourer, and coalminer. On his return in 1896 he secretly married a local woman, Sally Gallagher of Fairhill, Dungloe, Co. Donegal, and returned to Scotland where he began mining again, as well as running a lodging-house with his wife – an early indication of their business acumen. Politically conscious, he greatly admired the work of Michael Davitt (qv) and the Land League, and joined the United Irish League of William O'Brien (qv). Not wanting to raise children in Scotland, the couple returned to Dungloe; the money they had saved as members of the Pumperstown cooperative store in Scotland, where they collected a quarterly dividend on purchases and banked their savings at 5 per cent interest, enabled them to buy a farm at Cleendra, where Gallagher was noted as being the first farmer in the district to use a plough. Having experienced the mechanics of cooperatives in Scotland, he was anxious to see them established in his own district, particularly given local poverty which had forced five of his sisters to emigrate to America, and the contemporary exploitation of the impoverished populace by gombeen men and merchants. Encouraged by George Russell (qv), who had visited Dungloe to stress the benefits of cooperative agricultural banks, he persuaded locals to pool their resources to buy cheaper fertiliser, convincing the manager of the creamery society in Donegal to make the purchase, as under the rules of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society only societies, and not individuals, could make bulk purchases. Receiving advice from the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society, he invited the IAOS to send an organiser to Cleendra, and in 1906 the Templecrone Co-operative Society was established with fourteen subscribers who each contributed half-a-crown and commenced buying staple goods such as tea, sugar, and eggs. Gallagher acted as president and later manager. It was inevitable that he would face implacable opposition from local vested interests, as he was in effect trying to defeat the financial stranglehold exercised by gombeen men. IAOS recognition legitimised the society's trading in groceries and they began to expand their interests to include milking, baking, and fishing. He also facilitated the spread of the United Irishwomen (later the Irish Countrywomen's Association) in the area and was responsible for the formation of the West Donegal Fishing Society. A measure of his growing influence was his appointment as a JP (1906), after which he was invited to give evidence at an inquiry under Lord Dudley (qv) into the workings of the Congested Districts Board. He was elected to Donegal county council (1911) after a vitriolic campaign that included a court appearance on charges of disturbing the peace, following allegations by local traders who insisted he was libelling and inciting violence against them. In 1914, when giving evidence before the Department of Agriculture's committee on credit, he drew attention to the activities of gombeen men, who, in a district where 75 per cent of the populace was illiterate, were acting as shopkeepers, producers, buyers, and loan sharks, with up to 150 per cent interest being charged in some areas to vulnerable farmers whose land was then auctioned if they failed to pay. He insisted that the gombeen man, who ‘can ruin any man who crosses him for he is all powerful in his own district’, was more harmful than any bad landlord. He also decried the export abroad of Irish talent.
The Templecrone society continued to thrive and expand and was moved to new premises in Dungloe. By 1917 it was the third largest agricultural society in Ireland, with a turnover of £56,000, exceeded only by the cooperative societies of Lisburn, Co. Antrim, and Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. Recognising the potential of the ‘cottage industry’, by 1916 Gallagher employed nearly 100 women, making woven and knitted goods which were exported to America and England. He was also instrumental in the building of a pier at Dungloe and the purchase of a ship, the Glenmay, to overcome the British blockade of supplies to west Donegal during the war of independence, and the cooperative society's generator which subsequently supplied electricity to the town of Dungloe. Known by his sobriquet ‘Paddy the Cope’ (‘cope’ being the popular Donegal version of ‘cooperative’), he also frequently travelled to England, America, and the Netherlands to sell the cooperative's produce and lecture on agricultural techniques. A devout Fianna Fáil supporter, he frequently worked for the party on election campaigns, where his speeches were littered with references to local history. He was appointed to the commission on vocational organisation in 1939, the same year in which his autobiography My story appeared, written after encouragement from George Russell, and the work was subsequently translated into several languages. His wife, with whom he had two sons, died in 1948. Gallagher died 24 June 1966 at his home in Dungloe. By the early 1970s the Templecrone society had a turnover in excess of £1 million. His grandson Patrick was elected a Fianna Fáil TD for Donegal South-West in 1981.