FERGUS ROWAN: FERGUS ROWAN, who has died aged 84, regularly made headlines in the 1970s and 1980s when he locked horns with Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks over what he considered to be glaring inequities in the banking system.
He launched his campaign in the early 1970s after the family seed and farm machinery business was put into receivership and later into liquidation by Bank of Ireland.
In August 1975 he and some of his children occupied the Bank of Ireland foreign exchange branch in Westmoreland Street, Dublin.
He alleged that the bank had obtained possession of the premises, which previously housed Rowans' seed shop, by virtue of a debenture obtained unlawfully and under duress.
The dispute eventually ended up in the High Court, without a ruling being made in favour of the Rowans.
In the meantime, Fergus and his brother Paul began attending the bank's annual general meetings as bank shareholders to make their case.
Widening their agenda, in 1976 they opposed the re-election of six retiring directors.
Small business was not represented, Fergus Rowan said. "We do not want the spivs, the drones, the money makers," he added.
In 1977 Seán Dublin Bay Loftus accompanied the brothers to the agm. The following year the journalist Tony Butler joined them. Rowan told the meeting: "The banking system is a Punch and Judy show, with the banks outshining and out-Shylocking each other in a four-bank cartel system."
In 1979 the Rowans succeeded in having an emergency general meeting called at which Fr Michael Cleary spoke in their support; Fr Des Forristal was another clerical ally.
Fergus nominated the "legalise cannabis" campaigner Ubi Dwyer for election as a director. The incumbent directors easily saw off the challenge.
In 1984 the Rowans and their supporters sought a change in the bank's by-laws to facilitate the election of women directors.
When this failed, they proposed that Prof Mary McAleese and Mrs Patsy Lawler should be co-opted to the board.
Prof McAleese withdrew her name after it was announced that a woman was to be appointed to the board of one of the bank's subsidiary companies.
At the 1985 agm, the magazine publisher Noelle Campbell-Sharp sought election to the board but was unsuccessful. Fergus Rowan responded by rounding on the board, describing its membership as a "male, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, closed, self-perpetuating, self-selecting clique".
Turning his attention to AIB, he kept the directors on their toes at annual general meetings in the latter half of the 1980s. He immediately made his presence felt by taking the bank's directors to task over the loss-making subsidiary, Insurance Corporation of Ireland, which was bailed out by the government.
He also raised questions about share dealings involving the bank group's chief executive, and in 1987 unsuccessfully sought to have a fellow dissident shareholder elected as a director.
Born in 1924, he was the eldest of the six children of Michael and Julia Rowan of Bray, Co Wicklow. He was educated at Synge Street CBS and Clongowes Wood College, and graduated with a degree in agricultural science from University College Dublin.
He joined M Rowan and Company, founded in 1889 by his grandfather Michael Rowan and grand-uncle Peter, and eventually became a director.
His interests extended beyond his specialisation in botany to forestry, fruit, vegetable and cereals. They included apiculture as a result of which Rowan and Co developed a profitable business in honey, bee-keeping and related products.
In addition, he was a home-brewing enthusiast and in the 1960s was a founder member of the Dublin Home Wine Society. Likewise, he was an advocate of health foods. Aware that his was then very much a minority opinion, in 1973 he told this newspaper: "The crank of today is the wise shopper of tomorrow."
Following the closure of the family business, he bought pianos which he reconditioned and sold for a living. A survivor, he was deeply religious and never lost the values instilled in him as a young man.
He is survived by his wife Kathleen (née Keelaghan), sons Francis, Michael, Paul, John and Daniel and daughters Julie, Anna, Sophie, Amy and Eve.
Fergus Rowan: born 1924; died September 19th, 2008