Clareville Centre is owned and maintained by Dublin City Council (DCC), but is run by a local voluntary organisation with corporate status (Clareville Centre limited).

It is located opposite Glasnevin Cemetery and is surrounded by DCC sheltered accommodation for older and physically-challenged persons; seventy-three units in all, seven of which are designed specially to cater for physically-challenged people.

The Centre is within walking distance (500 metres) of a large variety of amenities; shops, post office, doctors, chemist, restaurants - at Harte’s Corner, which serves as a focus of the central village. All intervening kerbs have been dished for easy walking and wheelchair access.

De Courcy Square, nearby, Dublin’s first declared residential Area of Architectural Conservation, contains a community allotment, and Prospect Square, beside it, houses a village green in front of The Gravediggers, one of the most famous pubs in Dublin.

Glasnevin Cemetery is just across the road, with its new museum and Interpretative Centre, as well as a Church where public Mass is said on Sundays and Feast Days. It is an attractive centre, and now a top national tourist attraction, and contains a modern restaurant and coffee shop, as well as research facilities.

A pedestrian, wheelchair-friendly, gate now links the Cemetery to the National Botanical Gardens, making the Gardens accessible to our residents via a ten-minute walk.

Many famous individuals who resonate through Irish history are buried in the cemetery, e.g. Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, Clarence Mangan and Zozimus. The parents of James Joyce also rest there. The focal point of the cemetery is the O’Connell Monument, which contains a reliquary of Daniel O’Connell.

Dublin City Centre, with all of its amenities, lies within two miles of Clareville.

In 1980, the Claremont Residents Association was the overall winner in the Dublin Tidy Areas competition, and was very interested in the proper development of the surrounding area. It spearheaded the formation of the Finglas Road Joint Action Group, which drew representatives from all the Residents Associations in the Glasnevin and Phibsborough areas.

The principal concern of the Action Group was the development of a built environment that would facilitate a sustainable, thriving community. The critical impetus in 1980 was the acquisition of the land at Clareville by DCC from the Glasnevin Cemeteries Trust and its plans for the development of the site.

The Join Action Group entered into lengthy discussion with DCC, which resulted in a development that included sixty family houses, amenity open space, and sheltered accommodation for elderly and disabled persons. This development was completed in 1986 and included a Community Room as part of the sheltered accommodation.

In 1994, another plot of land at the site, which had been reserved for road development, was given over to housing and, following further prolonged discussion with the Joint Action Group, which now included representatives of the new housing at Clareville Grove, Claremont Lawns and the senior citizens at Clareville Court, a further 35 sheltered bungalows were completed in 2000.

This “Phase 2” included a larger Community Centre to cater for approximately one hundred people, Clareville Centre. Facilities were provided in the Centre for healthcare services to residents of the sheltered accommodation and other senior citizens of the district.

The thirty-five bungalows in Phase 2 consist of twenty-four one-bedroom single-story senior citizen dwellings, seven special needs dwellings (having from one to three bedrooms) and two-family dwellings. All dwellings and facilities of this phase are accessible to wheelchair visitors. The development is heated by a district scheme distributed by underground hot mains from a central gas-fired boiler house.

The Management Committee began planning to build a sun-room in early 2006. Approval was obtained from DCC, and the Committee applied to Pobal for a grant to cover part of the cost. The application was successful, and DCC put up the remainder of the cost, and agreed to manage the construction.

A competition was run among the service-users of the Centre for a suitable name for the sun-room; and the winning title was adopted as its formal name, i.e. “The Tower Room: Seomra na Smaointe,” and it was opened by the Lord Mayor, Cllr Eimear Costello, on 18 May 2010.