A staging post for the tens of thousands of Catholic pilgrims who each year climb the 2,510-feet Croagh Patrick mountain in Co Mayo was opened for business at the foot of the peak today.
A lot of the climbers, as many as 25,000, and many in their bare feet, flock to Croagh Patrick, overlooking the Clew Bay, on the final Sunday in each July to mark the occasion in the year 441 when St Patrick spent 40 days and nights fasting there and praying for the people of the country.
For hundreds of years mass has been celebrated regularly at a tiny oratory on the summit of the mountain, but the new facility is very much a result of the 21st century.
Known as the Murrisk Memorial Millennium Peace Park, it has been designated as the centre-piece of the Christian celebration of the Millennium in Ireland.
It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people climb Croagh Patrick on an annual basis, and the park has been constructed with the elderly and those with disabilities in mind.
The park has been built with the aid of a £250,000 award from the National Millennium Committee and was declared open by the chairman of the committee, Mr Seamus Brennan TD after blessings by church representatives.
Mr Brennan said Croagh Patrick was one of the world's best-known sites of Christian pilgrimage and "an appropriate place for this sensitive development".
PA