In 1999 South East Galway Integrated Rural Development, a not-for-profit local development company initiated a plan to conserve the building and the Irish Workhouse Centre opened to visitors in 2011. Today, staff provide tours of the building and share the story of the workhouse poor.
Main objectives South East Galway IRD Clg
To establish, promote and operate a community development programme, which will act as a focus and catalyst for community development for the community in South East Galway and surrounding areas, with a view to promoting their economic and cultural welfare and particularly to empower their specific disadvantaged groups to effectively participate in a programme of personal and social development.
Subsidiary objectives:
To benefit the community through the advancement of community development, including rural and urban regeneration and the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or sciences.
To provide a resource centre and programmes aimed at encouraging and profiting efforts, ideas and enterprises and creativity whether artistic or literary or otherwise and to further support the work of existing groups and to enable voluntary groups to maximise their effectiveness by providing administrative backup, additional expertise and networking facilities.
To operate workshops and training schemes for the development of art, music, creative writing, culture and associated subjects and to promote opportunities for promoting local talents and skills.
To encourage training in community development, leadership, organisational skills and social analysis for the benefit of the entire community and to enhance the development of the proposed community centre and to establish and support responding to local needs and problems.
To collate and disseminate useful information to the community and assist in the co-ordination of information, through the resource centre, community newspaper and local television and radio, to promote dialogue and collaboration between local groups and statutory agencies.
