Innumerate welcomes

TheLastStraw: All the talk about Garda intelligence last Saturday reminds us we are fast approaching the annual intelligence failure in which it will be reported that 500,000 people attended Dublin's St Patrick's Day parade. I used to believe this figure myself, and once faithfully repeated it in a news report. But then a numerate correspondent wrote in trashing the statistic, and I've never been able to believe in it since.

My correspondent's argument was that the parade ran for 1.5 miles through two lines of onlookers, giving a "crowd length" of three miles. This allowed for 7,500 people per single row of observers, calculated at a width of two feet each, shoulder to shoulder. Assuming 10 rows deep, which is pushing it, and adding the capacity of lamp-posts, etc, a crowd-counter's chances of reaching even 100,000 would be about as good as the chances of an average-sized parade observer, 10 rows back and without a ladder, seeing a majorette's ankles.

As a fairly typical journalist, whose powers of numeracy are sufficient only for the compilation of plausible expense claims (who said they were plausible? - Ed), I was powerless in the face of such logic, for which I again thank Michael Collins of Dublin 12. But the gift of faith remains strong in Ireland, and belief in the parade of the half-million seems unshakeable among the gardaí, the organisers, and the population at large.

The figure has attained folkloric status, alongside other time-honoured estimates, such as that visitors to Ireland can still look forward to a hundred thousand welcomes (many of them now in Polish) and, while touring the country, can expect to witness precisely 40 shades of green (in the gaps between holiday homes).

If anything, the trend towards obesity should cause the parade estimate to be revised downwards, since many of us are now more than two feet wide. In fact, Irish people are getting bigger at the very time that the trees in O'Connell Street - a parade vantage point - are shrinking. But far from downsizing the crowd, I see in yesterday's paper that the organisers predict "700,000" this year. Are they on a per capita grant, by any chance?

NEXT WEEK SEES the 40th anniversary of the blowing up of Nelson's Pillar. So far as I'm aware, there are no plans for a commemorative march, which is probably wise. There's little point in denying that the pillar's destruction was popular. It spawned several celebratory ballads, including Up Went Nelson, which - to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic - made number one in the hit parade and stayed there for eight weeks.

But the tradition of Dubliners unilaterally blowing up architectural features just because they hate the sight of them is not something you'd want to encourage. For anyone who likes marking anniversaries, this week's news that the State is selling Hawkins House, headquarters of the Department of Health, should surely be sufficient. Hawkins House is many people's idea of Dublin's ugliest building, and we can only hope the sale will encourage a mature debate about ways of improving its appearance. I'll bring the gelignite.

ONE OF THE ironies of last Saturday's events for any true republican is that the parade of his unionist fellow citizens did not even reach the Parnell monument, with its message that no man has the right to fix a boundary on the march of a nation: "No man shall say . . . thus far shalt thou go and no further". On a positive note, however, the marchers were re-routed to the Dáil and so got to pass another great Dublin monument: the pedestrian traffic light in Kildare Street.

As long-time readers know, the Leinster House light is, during Dáil sessions, the only fully functioning structure of its kind in the city centre. Although its primary function is to ensure the transit of Oireachtas members to and from their winter breeding grounds, for votes, the light also empowers ordinary pedestrians, affording them - among other things - a safe, legal method of annoying taxi drivers.

Most of the capital's pedestrian lights work the same way that, in Orange eyes, the North's parades commission does. You apply to walk the traditional route across say, Westmoreland Street. Whereupon the pedestrian light informs you that while it has considered the application, bearing in mind the contentious nature of your plans vis-a-vis the car-driving community, it cannot allow you to proceed at this particular time, but that if you apply again next year, the situation may have improved.

In Kildare Street, however, citizens of all persuasions can simply press the button, confident their requests will result, instantly, in permission to walk the president's highway. I hope the Orangemen tried it, and that they went home having seen more than one shade of green.