There was a tea party. There were mad hats. But that's not to say it was all chaos, writes Kitty Holland.
Up to 1,000 onlookers pushed their curiosity up against the barriers around Dublin's latest monument, as O'Connell Street's Spire was finally, officially, unveiled yesterday morning.
On his last official duty, the Lord Mayor, Mr Dermot Lacey, admitted he had been wrong about the Spire. He also had his photo taken in the sunshine with models - appropriately dressed in black cocktail dresses and "exotic hats" - and hovered over a table of melting cakes and weary sandwiches, intended, according to a Dublin City Council spokeswoman, for a "traditional Irish tea party".
Mr Lacey voted against the design for the Spire as a councillor in 1998 but said yesterday he had been "utterly and inexorably wrong". He had thought it would be sterile and out of place in Dublin's city centre.
"However, I, like many others, was converted in January when I with thousands of Dubliners watched the cone of the Spire drop into place. Somehow, and against all my expectations, it just worked," he said.
During his speech there was some heckling from a small number of protesters. Some objected to bin charges, while one man held aloft a picture of the parents of a child who died last week after being turned away from Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. He was protesting about funding for the health service.
The speeches from, among others, Dublin City Manager Mr John Fitzgerald and City Architect Mr Jim Barrett, were delivered almost unnoticed some distance from the Spire, with onlookers concentrating on getting past the barriers.
All wanted to see the main event. Mr Lacey lowered a time capsule some 2.3 metres into the ground at the base of the Spire. Made of stainless steel and about the size of two shoe boxes, it has been packed with items intended to inform Dubliners of the 23rd century about the lives of those in the 21st. Among them are a copy of an Argos catalogue, 20 Major cigarettes and the front page from the The Irish Times of July 3rd, 2003.
A plaque, which will be put in the paving at the spot where the capsule was interred, was also unveiled, revealing the official name of the monument as The Spire in English and An Túr Solais in Irish.
The public's reaction yesterday was mixed. Ms Pat Collins from Dorset Street, who was on her way to a cleaning job, described the monument as a disgrace. "Look at all the money it's after costing. Ireland is only a small country. We can't afford this type of thing."
Father Ray Hannon from Finglas said the Spire was "excellent for the city centre. In the sunshine it's beautiful," he said. "But the ceremony here today was crap. Nobody could see what was happening. It was far too crowded, badly organised. Nobody could see, or know what was going on."