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History
1897
IAWS Society was established by Horace Plunkett.
1983
Philip Lynch becomes CEO of the IAWS Society and reorganises the Society.
1988
IAWS plc is spun out of the IAWS Society and floated on the Irish Stock Exchange. The Society remains in place.
2005
Special General Meeting where IAWS Society chose to invest in Charitable causes.
2007
One51 Foundation incorporated.
Our Story
The Irish Agricultural Society Limited (“Society”) was established in 1897 with the aim of helping the Irish Co-Operative Movement to procure quality inputs economically and market their produce.
The Ireland of today is fast moving and forward thinking. But it wasn’t always that way. Indeed there were many dark years in the post-Famine Ireland when families lived in the most appalling conditions…food was scare, farming was primitive and families lived with little hope and scant promise of better days.
But despite the extent of the poverty and the enormity of the task in alleviating it there were idealistic individuals who devoted their lives to bettering the lives of the Irish people. One of them was Horace Plunkett, the man considered the founder of the co-operative movement in Ireland.
Horace Plunkett’s was "to help people help themselves" and from 1883 onwards Ireland began to awaken to a new dawn… where new farming methods were introduced, animal husbandry improved, home hygiene taught in schools and new homes replaced hovels.
The Ireland of those years mirrored in so many countries in the Developing World today. For many decades Irish missionaries have played an important role in helping communities in many impoverished places to better themselves.
There is now an opportunity for the commercial sector in Ireland to play its role in helping others to help themselves.
One51 Foundation follows on from the work of Horace Plunkett in his role with the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society. What Horace Plunkett achieved in Ireland One51 Foundation would like to emulate in needy locations both overseas and in Ireland.
When Horace Plunkett toured Ireland to witness for himself the awful conditions he saw ‘a half-naked child of four to five years lying asleep with his head on a rough block of wood, while a cow stood over him, watching and guarding the child.’ That was over a century ago. But those conditions still exist in many countries.
In July 2005, over a century after the founding of the Society, the Society chose to establish a Foundation to assist projects both in Ireland and overseas.