DUBLINERS WERE TREATED to an unexpected renactment of a the Lottery’s ‘rainbow’ TV ad this afternoon.

Except this time, there was no big budget advertising money in play.

The Samuel Beckett Bridge was opened this morning to allow a ship upriver as part of a 1913 Lockout commemoration event.

But as it was swung back into place a problem was noticed. The bridge isn’t opened to shipping all that often, and this morning the cable stays that support it expanded slightly during the period the ship was passing.

When the ‘swing section’ was manoeuvred back into place shortly before 1pm, the mechanisms weren’t reconnecting properly; a decision was made to hose the cables down, cooling them so they could reconnect as normal.

A tugboat equipped with high pressure, high capacity hoses was brought in by engineers on site. The hosing down took place, and the bridge was reopened to traffic shortly afterwards.

The rainbow effect was just a fortunate side-effect, it turns out.

TheJournal.ie reader Benjamin Lawlor says it was a spectacular sight:

“The incredible thing about this was that at the angle that we were standing, we got front row seats to a re-enactment of the National Lottery ad with a beautiful rainbow seen in the spray of the boats, smack bang in the centre of the Liffey.”

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said today’s incident “wouldn’t be untypical”:

The cable stays on the Samuel Beckett Bridge are due to be retensioned in the coming months. This is part of the routine maintenance of any cable stay bridge.

The matter you refer wouldn’t be untypical and can probably be expected before the routine retensioning.

The spokesperson said the bridge would have closed normally over a longer time period, but that the hoses were brought in to speed up the process.

[All images:  Benjamin Lawlor]

The National Lottery ‘Rainbow’ ad (Youtube: teddybrek)

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