St. Joseph’s Hall

Response to Parish Survey Findings (2007)

In the Parish Survey of 2002 79% of respondents felt that St. Joseph’s Hall was an important or very important parish facility and 63% had used the hall for a variety of activities.

79% of respondents felt that the most appropriate future use of the hall is for recreational activities, particularly activities designed for the youth of the area, with smaller numbers identifying it as an appropriate location for indoor sports, meetings, parish activities, fundraising activities, a market place, and as a venue for various social service initiatives. The Hall continues to be used for a variety of recreational activities including marital arts, aerobic classes and dancing classes. There has been a very significant development in relation to recreational activities for the youth of the area as proposed in the survey, with the development of dCaf, a youth café, at the rear of St. Joseph’s Hall. dCaf was officially opened in March 2007. The total cost of this re-development was €102,015, of which the Parish contributed €54,333. All sixteen volunteer youth workers associated with dCaf have been trained by the Catholic Youth Council.

More recently, the Hall is being used as a temporary location for the new Outreach Day Care Centre for older people.
Back in 2002, many identified the need to refurbish the hall before it would be suitable for such uses and indeed some felt that while the concept of a parish hall or community centre is important, the location of St. Joseph’s Hall is not suitable as it is beside a dangerous junction and has limited parking facilities. It is felt that the parking issue no longer has the same significance as the primary users of the Hall, the youth attending dCaf and the older people attending the Outreach Day Centre, do not require extensive parking facilities. Others expressed the wish that the Hall would be made available for private use while some of the organizations who use, or might use the Hall, felt that the fees charged were prohibitively expensive. The Hall Committee reassures prospective users of the facility that it is no more expensive than any other community hall in the area.
A number of the respondents to the original survey said they would like to see the parish more involved in running the hall and they would like to see new members involved in the Hall Committee. Since the survey was conducted a new Hall Committee was established and this Committee holds a public Annual General Meeting at which new members are welcome to join the Committee.

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