Thousands give a standing ovation as they watch the final act of Dublin's Spire

Street theatre is traditionally a low-budget activity. So having splashed out €4.6 million (and counting) on its O'Connell Street monument show, Dublin City Council must have been very relieved at the thousands who turned out to see the final act yesterday.

They packed into Henry Street and North Earl Street, into the footpaths of the main thoroughfare itself. They peered from shop windows, from rooftops, from the buses that passed (slowly) up and down. As the drama unfolded, even the remote-controlled CCTV camera at Henry Street joined in, turning around to watch the action.

Like all good dramas, it was hard to know just how the monument would turn out, even with the fourth and fifth sections added overnight. A well-known fish and chip shop on O'Connell Street had tempted fate, prematurely unfurling a banner with the message: "Beshoff's welcomes the Spire". So there were slightly nervous cheers when the driver of the giant crane - performing in front of the largest audience of his career - lifted the tip of the final 38-metre section just after 11.30 a.m. and started its slow journey skywards.

Not all eyes were on the crane, however. The two men in the top of the five-section Spire were delivering edge-of-the-seat performances, as they awaited the arrival of the apex. "Oh my God!" shrieked a woman in Henry Street when, in one of many thrills, a disembodied leg appeared over the side, 260 feet above.

But the duo in the Spire were apparently as indifferent to heights as they were to enclosed spaces and as the tip of the Spire neared the point where it would lock them inside, they waved merrily, drawing cheers from the gallery.

There was one final moment of tension when the Spire's 13.5-tonne top section appeared to be descending on one or more sections of the men inside. But the heads and arms got out of the way in time and the tip connected snugly to the rest.

Down at street level, the completion of the Spire drew a standing ovation, the city council having been careful not to provide seats. But no sooner was the curtain falling on the project than it was attracting mixed reviews.

Two of the losers in the design competition were among the harshest critics. Artist Micheál Ó Nualláin, a brother of the late Myles na Gopaleen, had not even waited for the final section before declaring that exposure to Dublin's salty air would soon leave the Spire an eyesore.

Mary Duniyva, a Ukrainian poet who had proposed a pillar topped with a sculpture of the sun, called the finished structure "a pipe, like something in a factory". She gave it six months before Dubliners would demand its demolition and the merits of her design would reassert themselves.

Most Dubliners were quietly welcoming the Spire, however and the younger they were, the more they seemed to like it. But the tradition of having monuments with historic figures on top dies hard for some. One passer-by lamented that the money had not been spent on hospitals instead. Then, in a dramatic piece of historical revisionism, he added: "If they were going to spend it on a monument, it should have been in honour of the man who brought Ireland together - Michael Collins."