The Taoiseach has said the Government is "strongly committed" to the full development of the west of Ireland and its participation in a prosperous national economy.
Mr Ahern noted this economy "with much greater opportunities" also offered "much greater social justice".
He was speaking at Friday's opening of the Michael Davitt Museum in Straide, Co Mayo, in a restored Penal church beside the 13th-century Straide Abbey.
Saluting the founder of the Land League as "a pioneer lighting up our path," the Taoiseach said he hoped policies of regionalisation would take the west far beyond the work of the Congested Districts Board and well into "the era of the Border, Midland and Western region with Objective 1 status".
The museum's premises have been funded by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, with additional support from Mayo County Council, the Irish Farmers' Association, North Connacht Farmers' Co-op and Riverdance. However, years of voluntary effort by the local community and the Davitt family helped to realise the project, according to Mrs Nancy Smyth, chairwoman of the Michael Davitt Association.
Mrs Smyth, who "married into Straide", founded the association after a public meeting in 1972. She believed the Land League founder's contribution should be marked in the village where he was born, and now lies buried.
Initially, a museum was housed in a room attached to the village community hall, but it was felt a purpose-built premises was required to do Davitt's legacy justice. The association had availed of FAS and third-level student summer job schemes to run the museum from 1984.
As the Taoiseach recalled on Friday, Davitt was only four when his family was evicted in 1850, during the Great Famine. He went to England and suffered a serious injury in Lancashire, at a time of "Dickensian" Industrial Revolution employment standards. He became an organiser of the Fenian movement, was imprisoned for seven years and went to the US on his release.
There he became one of the architects of the "New Departure" in 1878, sponsored by the Irish-American leader, John Devoy.
Members of the Davitt family from Dublin, England and the US attended the opening, along with long-standing members of the association run by the secretary, Ms Andrea Wills, including Ms Nora McHale and Mr Kevin Hynes. The Office of Public Works was instrumental in restoring the 18th-century Penal church, reopened in the 1940s as St Mary's Hall.
After the opening, a wreath was laid on Davitt's grave by one of his descendants, Ms Edina Davitt. The museum will be open during the winter, and much work still remains to be done, including more fundraising, according to Mrs Smyth.