Mac Fhionnlaoich, Peadar Toner (McGinley, Peter Toner; 'Cú Uladh') (1856–1942), president of the Gaelic League and writer, was born 5 October 1856 at Altinierin, Glenswilly, Co. Donegal, one of the ten children of Michael McGinley, farmer, and Susan McGinley (née Toner). He was educated locally and completed his studies at Blackrock College, Co. Dublin. On leaving school he entered the civil service as a customs and excise officer and spent nineteen years in England.
Mac Fhionnlaoich was transferred to Belfast in 1893 and two years later the first Belfast branch of the Gaelic League was founded at a meeting held in his house. He wrote in Irish under the pen-name ‘Cú Uladh’ and his first substantial work – a drama entitled Eilís agus an Bhean Déirce, produced in Belfast in November 1900 – was one of the earliest plays in Irish to be staged. His Handbook of Irish teaching appeared in 1902 and the book influenced the teaching methods used in the colleges that the Gaelic League subsequently established to train teachers of Irish. In 1904 Mac Fhionnlaoich was transferred to Portarlington, Queen's County (Laois), where he established a branch of the Gaelic League. He came to national prominence a year later when the local clergy demanded that the branch should provide separate classes for men and women – a demand that he and other members of the branch rejected. Mac Fhionnlaoich's rejection of clerical interference in the work of the League was endorsed by the membership when he headed the poll in the next election for membership of the national executive. Having retired from the civil service, he was elected president of the Gaelic League in 1922 and continued in that position until 1925. He presided over the special conference held in January 1925 to relaunch the League in the aftermath of the civil war and was successful in bringing Éamon de Valera (qv), Richard Mulcahy (qv), and other leading figures from both sides of the conflict together in the same room. Nonetheless, Mac Fhionnlaoich became increasingly identified with the opposition to the Cumann na nGaedheal government and in 1929 he argued unsuccessfully that the Gaelic League should lend its support to Fianna Fáil in return for pledges to increase state assistance for Gaeltacht areas. He was reelected to the presidency of the League in 1933, a position that he held until 1940, and was appointed to Seanad Éireann by Éamon de Valera in 1938.
Mac Fhionnlaoich married (1895) Elizabeth Woods, a native of Bogagh, near Raphoe, Co. Donegal, and twelve of their many children survived infancy. He died on 1 July 1942. A son, Diarmuid, followed in his father's footsteps by serving as president of the Gaelic League in 1942–5 and again in 1949–50.
More information on this entry is available at the National Database of Irish-language biographies (Ainm.ie).