To Trevek, regarding your post, dated May 2008 .... the Dublin Corporation removed the rubble and balled down the remaining unstable bits at the top, in the interests of health and safety, but it was the Irish Army that were tasked with removing the remaining stump.
I was an 18 year old, Dublin based civil servant in 1966, when the IRA decided to remove Nelson from his perch on top of Nelson's Pillar, in O'Connell Street.
What amazed me the time (and chilled me to the bone!) was the fact that the IRA had not only succeeded in acquiring and then placing explosives in such a public place, but that that their technical skill with explosives was such that they reduced the Pillar to little more than a vestigial stump, without causing any significant damage to the streetscape on either side.
In contrast (after the rubble was cleared away) the munitions experts from the Irish Army spent a good long while setting explosive charges to demolish that remaining stump ........... and blew out practically every window in O'Connell Street!! It was a very sobering and very scarey thought that an underground organisation had managed to acquire and demonstrate such vastly superior technical knowledge of the tactical use of explosives than that displayed by our regular army !!
So, of course it was a huge political coup for the IRA, but in my opinion, the Pillar was part and parcel of our history, and blowing it up wasn't going to change that history in any way what so ever.
The Pillar was also a popular meeting point for young courting couples who lived in different parts of Dublin, when arranging to get together for a night out in the city centre.
On the very rare occasions that I pass through Dublin, nowadays, I still miss that soaring column and "the spike" and "the floozie in the jacuzzi" are very poor substitutes for what once was !