Connemara village has ambitious €2.5m plan to secure its future

Students from seven American colleges are set to send students to the tiny Connemara village of Tullycross to study – if the local development company can raise €2.5 million to build a new education centre and renovate thatched cottages to house them.

The project has the potential to attract 340 students, teachers and family members each year, generating a massive economic windfall for one of the areas of the county hardest hit by the recession.

In what has been hailed as a primary example of rural Ireland driving its own economic future, Connemara West has declared itself ready to begin work on the international residential education centre subject to securing funding.

It is the biggest project undertaken by the local development company in its 46-year-old history.

Connemara West has had a relationship with Aquinas College of Michigan for over four decades. For the first four months of the year, Aquinas College sends 20 students to stay and study in the nine thatched cottages in Tullycross, with 1,000 students and staff visiting the village over that time.

Aquinas College now bases its Irish studies minor programme in Connemara, with Irish academics engaged to teach most of the curriculum.

Six years ago, Connemara West began to research how to bring more American college students to Tullycross. It has so far spent €250,000 on plans to bring that vision to fruition.

For more on this story, see the print edition of the Connacht Tribune.