The Irish Times

The President, Mrs McAleese, was not among the small crowd on Dublin's quays to watch the spectacle but it would have been a proud moment for her if she had been. Only two years after being elected on a platform of bridgebuilding between communities, she would have seen the Liffey's new pedestrian crossing point lowered into place yesterday, bringing two of the State's most mutually distrustful peoples - Dublin's northsiders and south siders - a little closer. And the symbolism of the Millennium Bridge does not end there. Designed by Dublin-based but Northern architects, built in Carlow, and incorporating leaning rails cast in London and polished in west Belfast, this is a bridge whose time has come.