With the country basking in spring sunshine and sporting success, the St Patrick’s festival got off to an early start filled with craic, ceoil — and curry.

St Patrick’s Day parades bring out the best in our towns and cities,Richard Fitzpatrick reports.

FOR all the ballyhoo surrounding St Patrick’s Day, the tradition of sporting a sprig of shamrock has faded in recent years, despite the fact that it can be bought packaged in many shops. Even the use of a little lapel sachet that keeps the plant fresh throughout the day is making little difference to the wearing of it.

We begged Disney not to make a movie about leprechauns, but Aer Lingus used them for ads. Do we like them or loathe them, asks Caomhán Keane.

I DON’T know when I had cabbage like it. The right amount of firmness, so tasty it must have been grown on volcanic soil fertilised by contented, opinionated cattle and cooked in water from one of those ads where the water surges free off a mountain that had trapped it since antiquity.

The Irish Centre in London’s Camden Town is re-branding as it celebrates its 60th Paddy’s Day, writes Claire Droney.

This is the day we, or at least the great majority of us, declare and celebrate our pride in being Irish even if that happy possibility is occasioned more by an accident of birth rather than any particular achievements.

Moneygall may not be known as a rugby stronghold, but Barack Obama proved last night that the Irish everywhere have just one thing on their mind when he hailed the “legendary” Brian O’Driscoll.

I was greatly honoured to be invited as Grand Marshall of the Cork St Patrick’s Day Parade. Little did I think, growing up as the son of Irish emigrants on Chicago’s south side, that I would be a future Grand Marshall for Ireland’s second largest city.

Cork City’s St Patrick’s Festival of music, fun, and food kicks off today in a three-day spree expected to attract 100,000 spectators.

WHO ya gonna call? Enda-Buster! Riverdance famously makes our Taoiseach cry, so it was fittingly patriotic of him to give us all a good St Paddy’s weekend laugh with his bizarre transatlantic trilling of Carly Rae Jepsen’s song ‘Here’s My Number, Call Me Maybe.’

Every March there is a tendency to refer to Éamon de Valera’s St Patrick’s Day speech of 80 odd years ago, and to misquote it as ‘the comely maidens dancing at the crossroads’ speech.

In his opening St Patrick’s Day weekend engagements in America, Taoiseach Enda Kenny pointed to the well-tested stoicism and determination of the Irish people.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has backed the PAC’s decision to involve gardaí in the deepening Rehab affair, saying that he “expects” the charity to provide full financial transparency when it returns to the Dáil committee next month.

If there is one thing worse than having to go through St Patrick’s Day and all its tacky manifestations every year, it is surely having to do it twice.

In your editorial of March 4 you refer to “New York’s (St Patrick’s Day) parade ban on gays”. It needs to be emphasised that there is absolutely no ban on anyone participating in the NY parade because of their sexual orientation per se. The ban is on carrying banners.

A four hour-stoppage by workers at Aer Lingus and the country’s three main airports on March 14 could ground hundreds of thousands of passengers both here and across the globe.