`It was the biggest event in the west of Ireland since the Pope came in 1979." Organisers of the Galway Arts Festival certainly believe that this year's fireworks and street show were something to remember. With a total of 100,000 people reduced to "a single gasp", as one writer put it, they may not be wrong.

The Galway Festival and every other millennium festival this year have proved one thing: if you want to create a bang, you need fireworks. The Kilkenny and Tralee festivals had them with water displays; Wexford Opera is having two days of them; Cork Jazz is bringing in an English company to do them and the Dublin St Patrick's Festival reckons it had one of the biggest and best ever.

But who is responsible for the bright sparks which are lighting up our skies this year?

The St Patrick's Day Skyfest in Dublin, which drew a crowd of 250,000 people, boasted that it had hired one of the big names in the fireworks business. Syd Howard was the Australian expert who lit up the skies for the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese. He was also responsible for the fireworks at the Atlanta Olympics, and is booked for the New Year's Eve celebration in London. Scale is what this fireworks display was all about, according to Rupert Murray, the St Patrick's Festival director; and scale certainly was a factor, considering that £400,000 was spent. "Few people would have the know-how to put on a display of this size," says Rupert, who hopes to do something even bigger for next year. The Galway Festival brought in Groupe F, a France-based pyrotechnics company which has incorporated street theatre into its shows. "More art than gunpowder" is festival director Fergus McGrath's description of the "fireshow".

"Galway likes to be different. Galway likes to be unique. And we wanted something unprecedented," says Fergus. "We saw Groupe F, we knew they were extraordinary and we wanted them."

Despite the international flavour, which some festival directors like to go for, there are four fireworks groups in the Republic who have provided entertainment to the Irish public for years.

Theatre of Fire in Bray, Co Wicklow was established 12 years ago. It was set up by Micklos Mennis who died in an accident in July of this year. "It is unnecessary to have fireworks companies coming in from outside Ireland," says a spokeswoman for the group. "We did the St Patrick's Festival to a great success the year before last and we could have done the festival this year. Festival organisers just get impressed by companies from outside Ireland. It's a shame, because Irish people don't get a chance to see what we can do."

Donal McMahon of Phoenix Fireworks, also based in Bray, is of the same opinion. "It's all about bringing in high-profile people. Festival organisers see something on television and they think an Irish company can't do it. But they can. Also the cost of bringing all the stuff over for outside companies is horrendous. But I don't mind if something new comes in."

One festival director is clearly impressed by what Phoenix Fireworks can do. "Everyone is still talking about the fireworks. They were fantastic," says Margaret O'Shaughnessy of the Foynes Irish Coffee Festival, which had its display on August 15th. "Donal gave us great value for money. We paid £6,000 for a show that really cost £9,000. I was at the Dublin fireworks, and we had everything they had - but they just had more of it."

Strict regulations govern the handling of fireworks in the Republic. Fireworks cannot be bought, sold or stored for more than a fortnight. Companies wishing to use them in displays must apply to the Department of Justice for an import licence at least one month before the display. The company orders the fireworks from Britain and keeps them there until it can bring them into this country. The fireworks can only be held here in a storing facility with a gun licence for up to 14 days before the display.

Pat Flannery has felt the brunt of these regulations. He is the owner of Show Tech in Naas, which acts as an agent for the English fireworks group, Millennium Pyrotechnics. Show Tech organised the display for the Rose of Tralee last week and then had last-minute problems with the licence. "I can't understand what the problem was," says Flannery, relieved that the licence was granted in the end. "We were dealing with one of the top three fireworks companies in the UK." He has been writing to members of the Dail for the past six years in an attempt to get the regulations which are among the strictest in Europe, eased. He says the ban on the public using fireworks could be the reason substandard fireworks come on to the black market.

Brian Thunder of Theatre of Fire also supports this view. "Suppliers on the black market are not reputable and do not give instructions on how fireworks can be used safely," he says. "People all over Europe this New Year's Eve will be allowed to put on their own displays. Let people here have fireworks. Let them have the safe ones."

However, the problems with the regulations seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Pat Whelan of Nationwide Fireworks in Wexford says that every country has its regulations and they have to be respected. "Fireworks are not toys and they can't be treated as if they are. The regulations are there for a reason and there are some very good parts to them," says Whelan, who has been in the fireworks business for nine years.

The main reason for the rules is safety - and with only one accident reported to the Department of Justice since 1996, they seem to be serving their purpose. This compares with two deaths and 2,972 injuries in the UK during the same period. The Garda has also been successful in seizing a number of consignments of illegally imported fireworks over the past number of years; this, too, has helped reduce accidents.

"We have no objections to fireworks, provided they are properly controlled," says Superintendent Tom Conway of Pearse Street Garda Station. "The biggest fear is that they'll get into the wrong hands and have implications for safety."

Whatever about the regulations of the fireworks business, there is no doubt that those involved love what they do. "You are entertaining vast amounts of people and that's what makes it so special," says McMahon, who was a mechanic before getting involved in fireworks through his brother's friend.

"There is a beauty in fireworks. It's like a performance where the fireworks tell the story," says Thunder, who also works as an actor. "The loudest sound you hear is when the fireworks go up and 50,000 people gasp together." Although there are some courses in England where people can learn to mount fireworks displays, most people train by working with the experts. And the work is hard. Anything up to 60 fireworks can be used in a two-minute segment of a display. Each sequence must be designed and it usually takes about a week to get everything ready. One day alone is spent setting up the fireworks for the display.

Design of a fireworks display depends on the site where it will take place, the number of people watching it and where they will be standing. While big displays often use the safer method of computers to set off the fireworks, hand-firing is still used in smaller displays and on occasions where timing is of the essence. In displays synchronised to music, the best way to ensure that the fireworks will go off at the right time is to light them by hand.

Every major city and town will almost certainly be holding fireworks displays to welcome in the new millennium this New Year's Eve. The festivals designated as millennium festivals will have a hard act to follow next year when the the extra funding they got is gone. But some say that they will try to get the money together again to recapture the magic of this year when the sky lit up over our heads.