What to expect from this year's St Patrick's Day festival

0:00It's the country's single biggest event, and according to Fulcher Ireland, it's worth almost £140 million a year. The St Patrick's Festival takes place this weekend with four days of events across Dublin City, culminating in Tuesday's Parade and Caleys. Here to tell us more is the CEO of the Festival Richard Tierney. Richard, you're welcome to the program. Tell us about the highlights. Oh, over four days. I mean, I think we've, I think we've something like 300 events happening over the four days. I'll probably be able to tell you about the highlights afterwards, but I think the parade is obviously, you know, the backbone of what we do. We kick off this Saturday as 10 o'clock with the treasure hunt, which is something that used to happen years ago. I'm going to go over and see your kept getting letters been asked to bring it back. So the Dublin City Council sponsored treasured is kicking the festival off at 10 o'clock. And then we have three days of a citywide takeover. We've eight performance areas around the city. I think we've 250 to 300

1:02performers right across the city. It's all free. It's something there for everyone. We have a family hope to help families navigate the festival with a family hope woodkey, which will have full family facilities and food. So you can base yourselves there. And then we go into the after dark program after six o'clock in the evening, where we have some amazing night time performances, some exhilarating fire performances, some fire performances from an aerial truss, quires, and then we get into some of the nightclub activity. And then we move in then on to Tuesday into St. Patrick's Day itself and the parade you kick off at 12 o'clock. So tell us then about this year's parade. What's the theme and what are you expecting? So the theme is roots. I was really excited in theme that our creative director, if a carry was very passionate about sort of putting aside the stereotypical Irish person and kind of looking back on our actual roots and where we all came from. So there's a lot of stuff. If you go to the website, St. Patrick's Festival, there's a lot of stuff culture stuff which kind of reflects our

2:02roots. So it's not just then about people, especially from the United States coming here to trace their roots. Listen, roots, it's open and it's whatever you want to do, whatever you need it to be and want it to be. I mean, listen, there's I think a hundred thousand plus Americans coming in. So our tourists. So yeah, I mean, I think it was the reason we do a theme is obviously to give an anchor for the vessel, but also to give the the pageant companies something to kind of focus on when they're creating, you know, the creative expressions, the floats. So yeah. The weather forecast for the next 24 hours, I know, isn't great. What are you expecting over the weekend and into the early days of next week? Because it is, I suppose in many ways, a bit of a joke, St. Patrick's Day is coming. The weather is bound to be terrible. Yes, I mean, it's the it's the start of the tourist season and also the dodgy weather. So I think, yeah, I mean, listen, it's Ireland. We don't, we have all sorts of weather reports. I think it's to be nasty today. The reality of it is,

3:03I think there'll be spots of inclement weather, but there'll also be spots of good weather. So, you know, particularly if you're coming into the fast and you're coming into the parade, do your research. Obviously, it's Ireland, pack like it's Ireland, bring, you know, appropriate weather gear and stuff. So we're actually not expecting anything too bad. Yeah, was it was it 2018? We had the snow. You're not expecting the snow this year. No, well, I think we're expecting the snow this afternoon. I think they're saying to get us out of the way. Hopefully, get us out of the way, but listen, who knows? We're definitely not going to have weather like the Bahamas. I can probably guarantee that, but otherwise, we'd be good. All right. Listen, thank you very much for joining us in studio this afternoon. That was Richard Tierney, who's the CEO of St. Patrick's Festival in Dublin.