St Patrick's Day in Ireland 2027

A real day off, not just a party

The biggest difference between the Irish and American versions of St Patrick's Day is legal. In the United States, March 17 is an observance: offices, schools and mail delivery all run as normal. In the Republic of Ireland it is one of ten public holidays, so banks, schools, courts, post offices and government offices close and most private employers give the day off! Under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, an employee who has to work is owed an alternative instead: an extra day of annual leave, an extra day's pay, or a paid day off within the following month. Part-time staff qualify once they have worked at least 40 hours in the five weeks beforehand.

The date and the weekend rule

March 17 is the traditional date of Patrick's death, and the holiday never moves from it. Because the date is fixed, it sometimes falls on a Saturday or Sunday. Ireland has no automatic right to take the next working day off in that case, but the entitlement survives, and in practice most employers, banks and public offices close on the following Monday, producing an observed holiday much like the American pattern.

How March 17 became a holiday

Patrick was not Irish. Born in Roman Britain in the late fourth century, he wrote in his Confessio that raiders seized him at sixteen and enslaved him in Ireland, and that he returned years later as a missionary bishop; tradition dates his death to 461. The feast was long a religious one - it became a statutory day off through the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903, enacted on March 27 that year and promoted by the nationalist member of parliment James O'Mara. The first state-sponsored parade in Dublin was held in 1931. For much of the twentieth century the day was notably sobre: the Irish Free State banned the sale of alcohol on March 17 from 1927, and pubs stayed shut on the national holiday until the law was repealed in 1961. The modern tourist-facnig celebration dates from the first St Patrick's Festival, held on March 17, 1996.

How Ireland celebrates

The Dublin parade anchors a multi-day festival of music, street theater and light shows, and Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and hundreds of towns and villages hold their own, many built around local marching bands, farm machinary and community groups rather than spectacle. Families attend Mass, wear a sprgi of shamrock, and watch club and county sports; the All-Ireland club finals in Gaelic games are traditionally played on the day. Landmarks worldwide are lit green under Tourism Ireland's Global Greening initiative, and the Taoiseach presents a bowl of shamrock to the US president at the White House, a diplomatic ritual running since the middle of the twentieth century. The shamrock story, that Patrick used the three-leaved plant to explain the Trinity, was first written down in 1726.

What is open

Banks, post offices, schools and public offices close and there is no regular mail delivery. Pubs, restaurants and most stores open, city centers are crowded and public transportation runs a holiday timetable with extra late services in Dublin.