Tierney was born in 1894 in the
townland of Esker, near
Castleblakeney,
County Galway, the son of Michael Tierney, a farmer, and Bridget Finn. He attended
St Joseph's College,
Ballinasloe, and entered UCD in October 1911. He graduated in 1914 with a first-class honours degree in Ancient Classics. Two years later he was awarded his MA degree, and he worked as an assistant lecturer in Greek from 1918 to 1919 and 1920 to 1922. In 1917 he won a
National University of Ireland (NUI) travelling studentship in Classics and used it to study in the
Sorbonne,
British School at Athens and Berlin from 1919 to 1921. He was appointed to the Chair of Greek in 1922. Tierney was elected a
Cumann na nGaedheal Teachta Dála (TD) for
Mayo North in a
by-election in 1925 and for the
NUI constituency in 1927, a seat he held until 1932. Tierney came to
corporatism through a study of Catholic social thought, and through an analysis of continental systems of corporatism, particularly those of Portugal and Austria. He was an early member of the Army Comrades Association (later known as the
Blueshirts) and, along with
Ernest Blythe, encouraged
Eoin O'Duffy to become the leader. Tierney suggested the name "Fine Gael" for a merger between his party, the
Centre Party and the Blueshirts. He was a member of
Seanad Éireann from 1938 to 1944. He wrote a biography of his father-in-law,
Eoin MacNeill: scholar and man of action (1980). ==References==