In 1988, the RNLI's Committee of Management made a decision that should have been made decades earlier. The west coast of Ireland had not received a new offshore lifeboat station since 1927, leaving a long stretch of Atlantic with no heavy-weather rescue cover. Ballyglass Pier on Broadhaven Bay was chosen for a one-year evaluation. Sixty volunteers came forward from the surrounding peninsula. Twenty-four were shortlisted. Eight were sent for training at RNLI Headquarters in Poole. The thirteen-year-old relief lifeboat City of Bradford IV arrived at the pier on 26 August 1989, and on 17 October the station was officially operational. The gap had finally closed.

On 4 May 1991, the station received its permanent boat. Mary Robinson, then in her first year as President of Ireland, travelled to the Mullet Peninsula to name the new lifeboat Mabel Williams in honour of its donor's wife. RNLI chairman Michael Vernon formally handed the vessel into the care of Ballyglass crew. Two years later, in 1993, a new boathouse and slipway went up at a cost of £150,000. The building, opened ceremonially on 28 May 1995, includes a workshop, a souvenir shop, an observation room, and a boathouse for the small boarding boat. The lifeboat itself sits on a mooring in the bay, ready to be reached and launched whenever the call comes through.

On a night in 1997, the Ballyglass crew, working alongside members of the Garda Síochána's underwater unit and local fishermen, carried out a rescue inside a North Mayo sea cave that would mark the station forever. The full extent of the cave operation and the conditions facing the rescuers were unusual even by Atlantic standards. The awards that followed told their own story: a Bronze Medal from the RNLI for Garda diver Ciarán Doyle; the Garda Síochána's Scott Gold Medal, also for Doyle; Scott Silver Medals for David M. Mulhall and Seán O'Connell; the Irish National Maritime Bravery Award for fishermen Joseph Barrett, Seán McHale, Martin Kavanagh, Martin O'Donnell, and Patrick O'Donnell. Michael Heffernan was honoured posthumously. In 2024, two further members of the original rescue team, Joseph Finnegan and Kieran Flynn, received Scott Bronze Medals that had been overlooked for nearly three decades.

What people call Ballyglass Lifeboat Station is really two stations under one name. The all-weather lifeboat 17-15 Bryan and Gordon, on station since 1998, launches from Ballyglass Pier into Broadhaven Bay and out past Erris Head into the open Atlantic. The smaller inshore lifeboat Clann Lir is based at Beach Road in Belmullet itself, at the head of the isthmus that connects the Mullet Peninsula to the mainland. From Beach Road, Clann Lir can be towed and launched into either of the two bays the town straddles, Broadhaven to the north or Blacksod to the south. The arrangement covers a coastline that has wrecked Spanish galleons, claimed merchant ships, and tested fishing boats for as long as anyone has tried to make a living on this water. The crew, all volunteers, are pagers away from their fishing boats, farms, and front rooms.