I believed I had detected a little head of steam being built up on this page against the bizarre choice of a metal spike to replace Nelson's Pillar - yet no real public debate has ensued. Consequently, Dublin City Council was emboldened earlier this month to vote 34 to 14 for the new "Millennium Spire", as it is to be called. But even here, there was great division. The vote actually split family members on the council - a rare thing indeed in politics - as John Stafford, TD voted for and brother Tom voted against. The Millennium Spire is to be situated on what has been acknowledged as being the most prestigious site in the State, and will cost £3 million. It was the winning entry in a Dublin Corporation sponsored competition, and was designed by a London architect, Mr Ian Ritchie.
Rhyming doggerel
Of course the ubiquitous wags who regularly "dub" new additions to the Dublin streetscapes with their vile rhyming doggerel have been at it again. The Jab in the Slab, the Lampstand in Clampland, the Spike in the Dyke, and the Stiletto in the Ghetto are but a few of their base coinages. They might have added, given the proposed monument's obvious resemblance to a hypodermic syringe, the Spear for the Gear. Or, given that its creator is English, could it be The Fix for the Micks? Pin de Siecle might be timely. Or, linking its historic location beside the GPO with current affairs, we could call it General Pin O'Shea ("Stick that up your junta," as our Wapping friends might say).
But back to our council meeting. The leader of the council, Alderman Pat Carey TD, seems to have lost the head completely, saying the spire would help transform O'Connell Street into a Dublin version of the Champs Elysees. Oh yes indeed, in the same way, no doubt, that the Dublin Corporation Civic Offices at Wood Quay are a version of Versailles? Tony Gregory said, somewhat mysteriously, that he felt the spire would "tilt the balance in favour of the northside". Luckily sanity was in evidence among some of the dissident councillors, one of whom said the plan was "reminiscent of Moscow in the 1960s".
Fellow citizens, let all of us please take a reality check. The thing looks for all the world like a needle, and is there anyone at all who is pleased by the sight of needles? The flesh naturally creeps. On a scale of aesthetic pleasures, a cold steel needle searing the sky lies somewhere between the sharp piercing scream of a seagull and a slap in the face with a wet kipper on a cold wet Monday in January.
No doubt a corporation subcommittee on art appreciation might say the work is of the minimalist genre, characterised by a sense of spareness and distinct lack of clutter. And a distinct lack of meaning, I might add. Given that the spire closely resembles one those of those very high posts that are placed at some traffic intersections with surveillance videos atop to monitor traffic, I suppose we could call the style "lamp-post minimalist".
Strange, though, this absence of meaning in a country obsessed by symbolism; strange, too, that a monument designed to mark the passage of 2,000 years since the birth of the founder of Christianity should signify absolutely nothing.
Cardinal Hume
In Britain, Cardinal Basil Hume, leader of Catholics in England and Wales, recently hinted that he was prepared to boycott celebrations at the Millennium Dome unless there was a greater element of Christianity involved. There was still no mention of God or Jesus, even though the millennium was supposed to mark the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ, he said.
What will visitors make of a £3 million monument to meaninglessness in the State's most prestigious location on the cusp of the third millennium? Families are split, political parties are split and the people are revolting. Surely this old town that has given us three Nobel prizes for literature deserves better decoration than this. Let us discreetly compensate Mr Ritchie - with the traditional brown envelope, if need be - and abandon this foolishness before it is too late. Nothing would be better than this.