Chief O'Neill's Hotel and Ceol, centre-pieces of the Devey Group's £60 million Smithfield Village development in Dublin's north inner city, are due to open next week, the group has announced. The 73-bedroom four-star equivalent hotel is dedicated to Irish music appreciation and each room will have an ISDN line, along with a midi hi-fi system and TV. The hotel is named after the former Chicago police chief and Irish music collector, Daniel Francis O'Neill. There is an 18 ft by 26 ft mural of O'Neill, who was born in west Cork and died in 1936, in the atrium of the hotel's reception.

Devey Group has built a fully equipped session room for recordings in the lower ground floor of the hotel which can be used for radio programmes and master classes. The recording room also has satellite link broadcasting facilities.

Attached to the hotel is Chief O'Neill's Cafe and Bar which Devey says will become a landmark for traditional Irish music - and will also feature a bronze statue of O'Neill. The adjoining Ceol traditional music centre will include an interactive visitors centre with media consoles and an 180-degree wide screen auditorium presenting panoramic visuals.

Later this summer, the observation platform on top of the existing old whiskey distillery chimney will open giving panoramic views of the city to visitors during the day and at night it will operate a restaurant.