Everyone is directed up, up, up to the seventh floor of the Guinness Storehouse. The building is reborn and ready to rock. At the top, a bar called Gravity is the crowning glory. It has views of Dublin at every angle - 360 degrees. The twinkling lights of the city never looked so magical.
Looking out through Gravity's glass walls are the chairman of the Arts Council, Pat Murphy, and his wife, Antoinette. Fionnan Ryan and his wife, Margaret E. Ward, who is from New York, look out across the city towards Clontarf, where their home is. "It's brilliant," says Lord Iveagh, down on the next level, as he looks at the giant glass and steel atrium. His younger brother, the Honourable Rory Guinness, is impressed too, as acrobats drop from girder to girder.
After six generations, Lord Iveagh says there are no members of his family involved in the brewing business now. "Not one of us," he says with a touch of nostalgia. The brothers chat to Jim Mitchell TD, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, and his wife, Patsey. "I could hug her," says the youthful Rory of Patsey, who helped deliver him 26 years ago, when she worked as a midwife at the Rotunda. "I gave him his BCG injection," she says.
Mitchell too is full of memories. His grandmother, Anne Foley, (no relation here) was born in the brewery grounds (and so were her father and mother before). And Mitchell's career began here, when he started as a messenger at the tender age of 14. The party goes on, all through the night, on all levels. Londoner Annalex Milton, in a sparkly white trouser-suit is here with her fiance, Ralph Ardill, who is a member of the Imagination design team. Also dressed for the occasion are Darrel Poulos and his wife Suri, from Dallas. "This is a monument," he says emphatically. "It's not just some building out by the airport!"