GARDAI say they were sufficiently confident about security not to evacuate the Point Theatre after a coded bomb threat was received.
More than 400 gardai were involved in checking the area in the week before Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest. People entering the Point site were issued with identity cards and put through airportstyle metal detector security checks.
The operation created what a Garda spokesman referred to as a "sanitised" zone, where gardai could be sure any bomb threat was a hoax. On Friday afternoon gardai evacuated the building as part of a "routine search".
Saturday's threat was received by a Belfast newsroom at around 8 p.m., just as the contest was due to start. A man using a recognised codeword told a journalist he was ringing on behalf of a splinter loyalist group based around Portadown, Co Armagh.
The caller said two devices had been planted and the authorities had half an hour to clear the area. "He was fairly cool about it," the journalist said.
The man rang back at around 9.30 p.m. to say that "if innocent people died then their lives were in the hands of the gardai".
Gardai had expected some form of loyalist threat following the IRA's disruption of the Grand National in Britain.
A Garda spokesman said security arrangements used during the EU presidency and the visit by Prince Charles to Dublin were repeated. One security source said the decision not to evacuate the arena "would have been taken on the ground" in consultation with management and staff of the Point.
Gardai from Store Street provided the security along with Special Detective Unit personnel and other anti terrorist officers.
. An RTE spokeswoman could not be contacted to confirm that RTE would have broadcast a dress rehearsal recorded earlier on Saturday if the event had been disrupted by a bomb alert.
