[citation needed] The National Executive Committee of the Union meets monthly throughout the majority of the year at 19 Parnell Square, Dublin City, and an AGM open to all members takes place annually in the same premises, usually in March.

The association has a category or 'honorary life members', and holders of this status, past and present, include Michael D Higgins,[17] William Trevor, Robert Greacen, Liam Mac Uistin, Benedict Kiely[18] and Sam McAughtry.

[20][21][22] Leland Bardwell, Seamus Deane, Brendan Lynch, Dave Duggan, Mary O'Donnell, Margeretta D'Arcy, John Arden and Sebastian Barry were also involved in the Irish Writers Union at the turn of the 21st century.

[40] Other notable members have included Catherine Dunne, Sally Rooney, Gerry Adams, Seamus Heaney, Benedict Kiely, John Montague, Thomas Kilroy, Val Mulkerns, Michael Hartnett and Brian Friel.

Still working from his base in Lucan, Harte employed the poet Padraig MacGrane to collect names of writers, setting up a preliminary social network of people who could be contacted.

With his contact list completed, in the summer of 1986, Harte sent out a letter to all those on it, outlining the plans and objectives of the proposed union and asking the recipients if they were interested in joining.

In the autumn of 1986, approximately 120 members-to-be met up in Buswell's Hotel, Kildare Street, Dublin City, to hammer out the constitution of a writers' union.

[60] Influential figures such as Celia de Freine, Liz MacManus, Eilis Ní Dhuibhne, Sam McAughtry and Michael D. Higgins assisted in the establishment of the Irish Writers Union.

There was a lack of clarity around copyright in Ireland in the 1980s, and in part due to the efforts of the Irish Writers Union, the situation was clarified in keeping with international best practice.

In 1989, the Irish Writers Union called for the Government to change the law which allowed publishers to sell works over fifty years old without needing to pay 10-20% in royalties to their creators.

The IWU's office at this time is described as being located at the Irish Transport & General Workers Union (IT&GWU) headquarters at Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.

[67] In 1989, the Irish Writers Union accused sections of the Muslim community in Ireland of "hysteria" in their reaction to the publication of the controversial novel 'The Satanic Verses.'

They were joined by Steve McDonagh, then president of the Irish Publishers Association (known as Clé) in supporting the novel's author, fiction writer Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, as well as bookshops, against physical intimidation.

[70] In the 1980s, a new Censorship of Publications Board composed of a body of retired judges started banning books afresh, among them works by Angela Carter; Alex Comfort's 'The Joy of Sex'; and various academic volumes dealing with erotic Classical art.

A member of the Senior Council offered to take up the Union's cause on a pro bono basis, on the grounds that the Board were interfering with the legitimate rights of authors to earn a living.

[71] Such acts as these chipped away at the authority of the Censorship Board and when its five-year ban expired, 'The Joy of Sex' duly appeared on Irish bookshop shelves.

The Irish Writers’ Union also sought the cessation of what it termed the "covert action" and "arbitrary and clandestine procedures" employed by the Censorship Board.

The Writers' Union advocated for fresh laws for censorship to be administered via the judicial system, instead of a technical committee, so granting authors and publishers the opportunity to an open forum.

A large number of old Georgian houses were falling into disuse in the inner suburbs of Dublin; Harte suggested that Cronin petition that one of these be set aside as a centre for supporting and promoting Irish authors.

[78] As of 2016, ambassadors for the Irish Writers' Centre included John Banville, Anne Enright, Michael D. Higgins, Roy Foster, Marian Keyes, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne and Joseph O’Connor.

Kitt stated in an Oireachtas debate that "the ICLA is concerned it may not be capable of being certified as it may not, in its opinion, be able to satisfy the requirements contained in section 166(2)(a), that is, that the works to which its licences refer can be identified with sufficient particularity.

Some authors are not members of the Irish Writers’ Union and, in many cases, ICLA is granting licences and receiving royalties for the use of works without the specific authorisation of the rights holder.

According to Peter McKimm, then chairperson of the IWU, the tax exemption primarily supported and motivated novice writers to maintain their professional trajectories.

They declared to then Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, that “this period requires an enormous investment of a writer’s time over many years, with very little or no income being generated from writing.

[86] The Union continued to lobby throughout the early years of the twenty-first century for a Public Lending Rights scheme, in this the IWU worked closely with the European Writers Congress (EWC) and the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency (ICLA).

[89] At the Report and Final Stages debate of the Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill, 2007, then Senator Alex White opined that "the Minister of State (Michael Ahern) has not, however, dealt with the possibility of a limbo situation arising.

The campaign was officially established when the Society of Authors, with the assistance of ALCS and other organisations, sent a formal open letter to publishers as part of a global collaborative effort to address creative contracts.

[93] In 2018, the UK based, Society of Authors, and the Irish Writers Union released a joint statement, in which they opposed a 'no deal' Brexit scenario.

Both organisations expressed their fears regarding such a scenario and provided the following reasons for doing so: Additionally, the joint statement placed emphasis on what was regarded as a historically intimiate relationship between the British and Irish literary communities, in particular, referencing the notion that there exists an "enduring popularity of Irish writers in the U.K. and vice versa," and that the two industries are "inextricably aligned, sharing the same VAT rates, Nielsen consumer data, territorial rights and Legal Deposit scheme.

Educators throughout Ireland live-streamed or uploaded storytime activities on social media platforms, ensuring that the recordings continued to be accessible online after the closure of libraries.