St Patrick's festival attracts 1.2 million spectators

A breathless weekend of celebration came to a close this afternoon with the St Patrick's Festival parade through Dublin City.

The festival organisers estimate more than 1.2 million people attended the three-day festival including over 500,000 at today's parade. Ms Maria Moyihan, festival chief executive, said this year's celebrations had been an enormous success.

"The atmosphere for the festival was set on Friday evening by the fabulous festival of light, AIB Meet Me At The River and today and today concluded fittingly with this, very special, colourful, and uniquely Irish St Patrick¹s Festival Parade.

"This year, among the participants we had 11 street theatre groups and 14 Irish marching bands from all over Ireland. Together they brought their collective energies and imaginations to bring Dublin a dazzling parade working around the theme of Fusion."

Cabaretby Bui Bolg won the best parade entry - according to a jury of under 12s - in their performance which featuredsalsa dancing exotic animals.

The runners up were 2001-A Greek Odysseypresented by Spraoi and Guinness. This award winning group returned to the parade to present Greek mythology with industrial imagery.

Clondalkin Youth Band, the current European and Irish Marching Band Champions, won the best band award.

Other winners included the Mullingar Town Band, Perambulation and Confusion.

Attending the parade was the President Mrs McAleese who opened the festival on Friday and the Taoiseach Mr Ahern.