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St Patrick’s Day celebrations pass peacefully

Friday, 27 March 2009

ESTIMATES say over 600,000 turned up to witness Dublin’s St Patrick’s Day Parade in the city centre on what turned out to be a day of mostly peaceful celebrations. Dublin, bathed in sunshine, reverberated to one of the most colourful and vibrant festivals ever seen in the city as a stunning two-hour spectacle wound its way around city streets. International bands from India, Germany, England, Colorado, Las Vegas and Canada were joined by street theatre groups, giant puppets, dancers and marching bands as an appreciative audience made up largely of visitors and family groups enjoyed the day. Alison Kelly, St Patrick’s Festival Committee spokesperson, said the festival was “a resounding success” with huge numbers attending the many events around the city. “There was very much a family orientated atmosphere around the city centre and we were delighted with that,” Ms Kelly told Northside People. “We haven’t got the exact figures yet but in my opinion the numbers were up on last year. “We had a lot of visitors in town and not only Americans, we also had a lot of French, Italians and Germans, which was great.” Ms Kelly pointed to the ‘Spheres’ event that took place in Grand Canal Square over two nights, with two performances each night, as being one of the highlights of the festival. “These performers came all the way from Australia and were a huge success,” she added.  “Their show entailed performers positioned on seven-foot poles as they swayed in mid air to musical accompaniment; it was truly spectacular.” And it was good news too in general from the emergency services. A spokesperson for the Garda Press Office said the day was comparable to a busy Saturday in terms of incidents dealt with. “We are not flagging up any major incidents from our point of view, although we did have a lot of manpower in the city and suburbs for the festival,” the spokesperson stated. A Dublin Fire Brigade spokeswoman said their personnel responded to in excess of 300 calls in a 24-hour period. “These were a mixture of fire brigade and ambulance calls and although some of our personnel encountered some abuse there was no bad assaults like in previous years,” she stated. The Finglas area was the scene of majoring rioting during last year St Patrick’s Day but according to local councillor Dessie Ellis (SF), this year passed off without major incident. “There were some small incidents of stone throwing but we had a large Garda presence on the streets,” said Cllr Ellis. “I’m glad to say things went quite well, despite some posts on the internet trying to incite things.”