Mount Carmel in Loughrea is set to get a new lease of life after being purchased by a local businessman for his global headquarters.

Social entrepreneur Mike Feerick – who employs around 200 staff across 35 countries through his Alison.com free online learning platform – bought the former Carmelite monastery at the end of last year.

He said the monastery “will be reborn to a new life as an international education and training institute” for his business and will serve as headquarters for his companies.

While the businessman finalises the design for the new HQ, Mount Carmel will be accepting Ukrainian refugee families – around 80 people in total – in the short-term.

He told the Connacht Tribune: “It is a big project taking on the monastery property, but we’ll digest its potential step by step. All in all, the plan is to develop Mount Carmel is a very community friendly way.

“In the near term, we have agreed to accept Ukrainian Refugee families as part of Ireland’s response to the international emergency. It is an ideal place for women and children to be located, if even short term, and we are very conscious of that.

“Alison is a technically focused business. Behind the website that provides 5,000 free courses and psychometric assessments to 25 million people worldwide, there is a lot of number crunching through code and analytics – and that work is very much computer based done by individuals working on their own remotely across many different countries.

“Now and then however, it is important for our team to meet physically, and that is the vision behind the new Loughrea HQ which has over 20 bedrooms – that our staff can come, even with family, and stay at Mount Carmel, and meet other team members from across the world, in training workshops and various management meetings. Having a location that is quiet, with pleasant gardens to enjoy, yet near the centre of a town like Loughrea makes it’s a very compelling place to visit.

“While the business may be a virtual operation, there is still a need to meet up face to face, to work, learn, and socialise together from time to time, and it was that need that first led to the interest in acquiring the Mount Carmel property. There is a need for hosting our people coming to Ireland. It saves on having them in local hotels,” said Mr Feerick.

He said that at the moment, Alison is entirely virtual and remote-working based – even for its team who had been based in Parkmore in Galway for the past twelve years.

It is hoped that parts of Mount Carmel will remain “community-focused” and open to the public, such as the chapel and gardens.

“An education company taking over the property is a nice coincidence. In the mid nineteenth Century, Loughrea was in dire need for a girl’s primary school, and the Carmelite Sisters broke their custom of being a contemplative order to provide Loughrea with the needed school until the arrival of the Mercy Sisters. Many years later, empowering people through education will once again be the focus at Mount Carmel,” said Mr Feerick.

Mount Carmel was vacated by the Carmelite Sisters in December 2020 and was purchased at the end of last year for a figure believed to be in the region of €450,000.

Meanwhile, Mr Feerick, who is also the Founder and Chairman of Ireland Reaching Out – a national volunteer-based charity which helps the Irish Diaspora connect to their place of origin in Ireland for free –  is keen to contact anyone with information on the history of the monastery and those who lived there.

“It is a history we should understand and celebrate. We have ideas of who funded the main convent building in 1828, on land leased from the local landlord Clanrickarde, but we would love to learn more. It is very important that the legacy of Carmelite Sisters and their contribution to Loughrea is remembered, and we will make sure that happens over time,” he said.