The state-of-the-art building was opened in 2008 as a fitting home for the award-winning Wexford Festival Opera, as well as being built as an all-year-round multi-disciplinary performance art-form theatre. It has recently been granted further official recognition by being designated Ireland's National Opera House by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, announced at the start of the 63rd Wexford Festival Opera, in October of 2014, by the Minister for Arts Heather Humphreys. The designation means Ireland now takes its place among Europe’s great nations with its own specific opera house and deservedly recognises the State’s significant investment in the creation of what has been internationally acclaimed as ‘the best small opera house in the world’.