Fionán Lynch (Irish: Fionán Ó Loingsigh; 17 March 1889 – 3 June 1966) was an Irish revolutionary, barrister, politician and judge.^[1]

Fionán Lynch was born in Cahirciveen, County Kerry in 1889 and educated in Rockwell College and Blackrock College. He qualified as a national school teacher in 1912 and joined the Gaelic League the same year. He was a founder member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) that same year. He was a friend of Michael Collins. Lynch fought in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. He was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol and was one of the last Irish men to speak with Thomas Ashe before he died. He was later interned in prison in England and Wales until the general amnesty in late 1917.

Upon his release Lynch resumed his paramilitary activities and was elected as an abstentionist Sinn Féin Member of Parliament for Kerry South at the 1918 Westminster Election, becoming a Member of the 1st Dáil. He was automatically elected as an abstenionist member of the House of Commons of Southern Ireland and a Member of the 2nd Dáil as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála for Kerry–Limerick West at the 1921 elections. He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty like almost all IRB members and during the Dáil Debates criticised some Anti-Treaty TDs. During the Civil War he fought with the Irish Free State Army and rose to the rank of Brigadier. He left the Army in 1923 to concentrate on his political career.

He was elected to the 3rd Dáil at the 1922 general election as a Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin TD and at each subsequent general election as a Cumann na nGaedhael and later Fine Gael deputy for the constituencies of Kerry from 1923 to 1937 and Kerry South from 1937 until 1944.^[2]

Lynch served as Minister for Education from April to August 1922, as Minister for Fisheries from 1922–1930, and as Minister for Lands and Fisheries from 1930–32. After the entry to power of Fianna Fáil in 1932, he qualified as a barrister and remained a TD until his appointment as a Circuit court judge in 1944.

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