The St Brendan's project has attracted international attention as a blueprint for care of the elderly in the community. Three examples of elderly returned emigrants who have been housed there demonstrate its impact.
Mary Caffrey (nee Keane) left Achill Island in 1934 aged 13 1/2 to go into domestic service in London.
She was the second eldest daughter of six children when circumstances compelled her emigration. "There was nothing in Achill in those days," she says.
At the age of 15 she went to Scotland to work on potato farms, and she got married there as the second World War was starting. She spent 28 years in Scotland and had her two children there.
Her husband died in 1970 and she went to Manchester, where she had relatives. Her son and daughter eventually married there, and she was housed by the council. "I've lived on my own in a high-rise block since 1974," she adds, "but Manchester was getting very, very bad and you were always looking over your shoulder. I also lived with my fear of getting ill - which makes you ill anyway." Mary is delighted to have been accepted recently to occupy a small house in the secure environment of St Brendan's village. "Here you are respected and treated with dignity," she says.
Pat Gallagher, aged 75, and his widowed sister, Mary Harris, aged 82, share another St Brendan's house. Pat left Curraun, Achill, in 1940 at the age of 16 and travelled and worked with various contractors in Britain. He also worked at picking potatoes in Scotland and has been an emigrant for 58 years.
He linked up with his sister, who had a council house in Fife, when her husband died in 1981, but both of them were anxious to return home, and they applied to St Brendan's after a relative wrote to them about the new project.