St Patrick’s Day puts Ireland in the limelight

This year’s celebrations are a welcome chance for recession-hit Ireland to put itself in the tourism spotlight, as pubs and hotels pack with revellers

Several of the world’s landmarks are turning green for St Patrick’s Day today, the annual celebration of all hues of Irishness.

The Sydney Opera House, London Eye, Toronto’s CN Tower and New York’s Empire State building will be lit by green floodlights as part of a marketing push by Tourism Ireland.

Back in Ireland, Dublin’s flagship parade started at 12pm in Parnell Square, led by soccer legend Packie Bonner. Around 650,000 people are expected to line the 3km (2-mile) route. This year it takes the theme The Extraordinary World - a nod to Ireland’s increasing multiculturalism as well as the past two centuries’ global spread of the Irish.

New York’s St Patrick’s Day parade is the world’s largest, and attracts 150,000 official marchers along 5th Ave, 44th-45th St. The parades originally started in the US but have since become part of Paddy’s Day celebrations everywhere. Many cities, London included, chose to have their parade early on Sunday 14 March.

This year Ireland is pushing itself especially hard as a tourist destination as the country faces its worst recession since the Great Depression, with double-digit unemployment and net emigration for the first time in 15 years.

St Patrick’s Day is Ireland’s first major tourist event of the year, packing hotels and pubs with visitors seeking an all-night party. Ireland’s weeklong festival gets bigger each year, with more than 100 parades today in cities, towns and villages across the country.

Virtually the entire Irish government left the country this week to greet foreign leaders and corporate kingpins in 23 countries in hopes of rekindling the investment wave that fuelled Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom of 1994-2007.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen was meeting US President Barack Obama at the White House, continuing Ireland’s tradition of annual access to perhaps the most powerful man on earth. In honour of the occasion, the water in the fountain on the north lawn of the White House was dyed a subtle shade of green.

President Mary McAleese, Ireland’s ceremonial head of state who stayed at home to preside over the Dublin parade and her own St Patrick’s garden party, said the Irish had powerful allies in politics and business backed by 70 million people of Irish descent, half of them Americans.

"We are lucky to have such a large global family. It has proved itself to be a very precious and important resource in every generation," she said.

St Patrick’s Day is held on 17 March each year, believed to be the anniversary of the saint’s death. Originally a Briton he was enslaved in his youth in Ireland but despite escaping he later returned to Ireland to spread Christianity in the 5th century. According to legend, he banished snakes from the island and used a shamrock to teach the concept of the Holy Trinity.

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 March 2010 13.22 GMT