The mayor of Boston has met IDA and Irish-American business leaders to explore commercial opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic. Mayor Marty Walsh is on a 10-day trip to Ireland aimed at strengthening business, political and cultural links. It is his first official overseas trip since his election as mayor last November.

Later this week Mr Walsh is expected to meet executives of Primark (Penneys), which is due to open its first US outlet in Boston next year.

Mr Walsh, whose parents came from Connemara, spent the weekend meeting extended family and friends in the villages of Carna and Rosmuc. He later delivered a formal address to members of Galway County Council at NUI Galway.

He stressed that the focus of yesterday’s business meeting was on opportunity – there are several Boston-based corporations operating out of Galway.

“We are talking about the life sciences where, like Boston, Galway is a leader,” said Mr Walsh. “We are talking about high tech, where there remains so much potential for growth – and we are talking about tourism. Connemara especially helped to invent heritage-based tourism that has transformed our understanding of culture in the western world,” Mr Walsh added. “It is a model that has saved countless local cultures from extinction by marrying their preservation to regional economic goals.”

He told councillors that young people today had much more opportunity that his parents did when they left Connemara as teenagers. “They have countless models of local business ownership and they have access to third-level education – at costs lower than many American families would believe – that could take them into any career they choose.”

Mr Walsh later met Boston and Irish students who are studying at NUI Galway. Last night he was guest of honour at a special “homecoming night of celebration” with family, friends and neighbours at Screebe House Hotel in Connemara.

Today he will lay the foundation stone for an Emigrants Commemorative Centre in Carna, which will form a tangible link between the residents of the Carna/Cill Chiaráin parish and their emigrants. The centre will be built on the site of the old national school which included among its pupils the former taoiseach Liam Cosgrave. Mr Cosgrave (84) is due to attend today's ceremony.

Mr Walsh will travel to Dublin and Belfast later this week for a series of engagements.