Since starting in Finland, it has been used in over 60 countries around the world. IRC is constantly evolving, so the way things to work one week may not be the way they work the next. IRC gained international fame during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where updates from around the world came accross the wire, and most irc users who were online at the time gathered on a single channel to hear these reports. IRC had similar uses during the coup against Boris Yeltsin in September 1993, where IRC users from Moscow were giving live reports about the unstable situation there.
Servers exist to pass messages from user to user over the irc network.
First, check to see if irc is installed on your system. If this doesn't work, ask your local systems people if irc is already installed. This will save you the work of installing it yourself. It's usually best to try and connect to one geographically close, even though that may not be the best. You can always ask when you get on irc.