The former home of Irish basketball will be reopened as a community centre in Inchicore, Dublin, tonight by the Taoiseach. The Oblate Hall was the venue for the first National Cup finals in 1984 and was a major national centre until the National Basketball Arena opened in Tallaght.
It was destroyed by fire some years ago but has been rebuilt at a cost of £800,000 with much of the work done free by locals. Half the cost of the new centre has been contributed by the Government.
Its centrepiece is a basketball/multi-sports facility suitable for international competition. It also includes a crΦche, fitness centre, shop, dinner centre for older people, a community drugs team, education training rooms and adult literacy service.
The Inchicore centre was originally the brainchild of Father Joe Horan, who, with Mr Harry Boland, was central to the development of basketball in Ireland from the 1940s.
As a result, basketball became particularly popular in the local area and the senior women's team of Inchicore's Naomh Mhuire basketball club reached the final of the European Cup in the early 1990s. The campaign to replace the burnt-down hall was led by Father Pat Carolan, parish priest of Inchicore.