Fireworks there were aplenty in Dublin on Saturday night, but they were nearly outnumbered by all the barriers erected by the nanny State to protect people from themselves.
The public was even deprived of one the most popular vantage points, O'Connell Bridge, by a grey metal screen - apparently designed to prevent large numbers from congregating there so that the traffic could get through.
Notionally, the Garda sought to enforce a space requirement of 0.5 sq metres per person. But the throngs of thrill-seekers were at least 10-deep along City Quay. Still, it was a good weekend for the galvanised steel sector.
Rowan Gillespie's bronze Famine group on Custom House Quay also got the protective treatment. Surrounded by temporary fencing, the emaciated figures metaphorically sloping towards the docks looked like sheep in a pen.
"The garda∅ were taking a bit too much care of us. There were barriers going up at 7 p.m., as if they were about to build the Berlin Wall", said Cllr Ciaran Cuffe, of the Green Party. "In Barcelona, fireworks are taken for granted".
At the Clarion Hotel, right in front of the firing zone, polite doormen were restricting entry to residents only, just in case anyone might sneak upstairs for a better view. But the bar in Jurys Inn was jammed with revellers waiting for the show.
The sponsor, 7Up, had its logo emblazoned in coloured lights, white luminescent globes and banners strung out along the quays, lest we forget. And 98FM, which was also involved, had us nearly blasted out of it with powerful speakers.
Unlike the damp squib of AIB's "Glimmering" the previous night, the weather was ideal for fireworks - a black, almost cloudless starry sky, with the new moon hanging over Heuston Station. Conditions could not have been better.
With pyrotechnics provided by the same team that lit up the Eiffel Tower in Paris for the Millennium, synchronised to music on 98FM, several hundred thousand spectators happily watched as more than €300,000 went up in smoke.
It started with small white bursts from pontoons in the middle of the river, followed by a hellish red glow from Sir John Rogerson's Quay, belching black smoke, balls of fire and shooting stars before the entire firing zone seemed to erupt.
With helicopters hovering overhead and members of the Garda sub-aqua team scooting about in an inflatable dinghy, a tug spewed out jets of fire like a hydra-headed dragon - to be joined later by a speedboat armed to the hilt with fireworks.
Big cloudbursts came in white, purple, green and blue, followed by more shooting stars. And as the music became more frenetic, the fireworks did, too, creating a huge eucalyptus tree in the sky and filling the air with the smell of cordite.
The 20-minute "Skyfest" ended with a rapid-fire series of high bursts and a wall of phosphorescent white light in the middle of the Liffey. "Fantastic!", said Mick McCarthy, manager of the Republic of Ireland soccer team and parade grand marshal.
He was watching it all from Custom House Quay with Feargal Quinn, the festival's chairman, kitted out in a green shirt and green tie. All he lacked was a lepreachaun's hat.
