[4] He was born at Batton, Castlemore, County Kildare and was educated at CBS Athy, Castleknock College and at the Royal University of Ireland.
[4][5] Éamon de Valera's son Terry wrote in 2006, "Perhaps of all my father’s friends and colleagues none were so close, nor had his trust as had Robert Farnan.
[7] In September 1922, his house was the venue for a meeting between de Valera and Richard Mulcahy which tried in vain to halt the Irish Civil War that the Treaty had started;[8] it is mentioned in As I Was Going Down Sackville Street, Oliver St. John Gogarty's memoir of the time.
[2] De Valera, who received financial support from Farnan for a time, made him a director of The Irish Press newspaper since its foundation in 1932.
[4] Robert Farnan bequeathed Bolton Castle to the Archdiocese of Dublin to establish a monastic community, which was done by Mount St. Joseph Abbey, Roscrea after 1965.