Ian Ritchie is British, based in London, but any apparent imperial irony is limited - he has offices in several countries, spends a lot of his time in France, and is generally pan-European. He won the international competition for what was meant to be Dublin's Millennium monument back in 1998. But - dare one say this is gloriously Irish? - the project was successfully challenged by one of the 204 losers in the competition, a septuagenarian artist named Michael O'Nuallain who is the brother of the late fantastical writer Flann O'Brien. The courts decided that the Spire should not be built straight away, but be made to jump through bureaucratic hoops first. Which it duly did - but too late to meet the Millennium. Presumably the idea was that the delay would kill it off, but no - it has been built, just as Ritchie designed it, and now only needs the final details to be finished at its base and apex.