Community: A time, place, and people a memoir by Michael O’Neill

Fifty years ago, in 1974, the Christian Brothers departed Letterfrack where they had operated St Joseph’s Industrial School since 1888. The history of the school and the experience of the 2,819 boys who passed through the institution in those eighty-six years has subsequently emerged.

However, the departure of the Christian Brothers marked the beginning of a positive transformation for the village and the region. A local group of community activists made a decision to purchase the former Industrial School buildings and encouraged the State to take on the farm and Diamond Mountain lands for a national park. This visionary group formed a local development company known as Connemara West plc and with widespread community support set about transforming the former school and undertaking numerous other projects throughout the parish of Ballinakill. At the helm of Connemara West during all this period was Michael O’Neill.

Michael continued his involvement with Connemara West and many other organisations in the region and nationally. He has documented all this pioneering work in a manuscript entitled Community: A time, place, and people. It is a social history of a disadvantaged rural region as told through the experience of a national school teacher, a parent, an activist who reflects deeply on the experiences of that period.

Published by Artisan House Connemara.