Hong Kong Turns Green for a Day
On one day a year, March 17, the world, including Hong Kong, turns green. It is St Patrick’s Day, the National Day of Ireland, when cities around the world hold parades, balls, sports competitions and other events to celebrate the day.
More than 50 million people of Irish ancestry live around the world, including 7.3 million on the island of Ireland. The government sends ministers around the world to celebrate this diaspora.
“St. Patrick’s Day provides an unparalleled opportunity to showcase Ireland on the global stage and to engage at the highest levels with political, business, civil society, cultural and diaspora leaders,” said Helen McEntee, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“This year, 40 representatives of the State will carry Ireland’s message to cities across more than 50 countries worldwide,” she said.
It is the country’s most important marketing effort of the year, using the visits to attract students, tourists and investors.
Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin will go to the White House – with some trepidation – to meet President Donald Trump on St Patrick’s Day.
A year ago, Trump lectured him about how Ireland was “taking advantage of the U.S. and had the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry in its grip.” Martin sat patiently in silence.
This time he hopes to pre-empt Trump by outlining planned investment of 5.2 billion euros over three years in the U.S. by Irish companies and hope the president is distracted by his war in the Middle East.
Jerry Buttimer, Minister of State at the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, will go to Beijing.
About 5,000 Irish people live in Hong Kong. The main celebration will be the St Patrick’s Society’s Annual Ball, a black-tie event at the Hong Kong Football Club on March 14. Guest of honour will be Eleanor McEvoy, one of Ireland’s most famous singers and songwriters.
Her most popular composition is “A Woman’s Heart”, which sold 750,000 copies in Ireland, more than any other album in Irish history, and one million worldwide.
The St Patrick’s Society is the oldest Irish association in Hong Kong, founded in 1931 for social and charitable purposes.
On March 10, the Asia Society showed “From That Small Island”, narrated by Colin Farrell, to celebrate the Irish people and diaspora.
Happy Valley racecourse will host two Irish nights on March 12 and 19. From March 17-22, Central Market and Guinness will celebrate the event with live performances, Irish dancing and traditional food.
One of Ireland’s major exports is literature. Dublin-born Rob Doyle presented his latest novel “Cameo” at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival that ran from March 1-8.
At the event was Korean Hong Moonyoung, who teaches Irish literature at Hong Kong University. She earned a MPhil in Irish Writing and a Ph.D in English at Trinity College, Dublin.
Featured at the Festival was “The Irish in Hong Kong”, published by Earnshaw Books, a new book by the author of this article. It describes the great contribution to Hong Kong by hundreds of Irish people over the last 180 years.
Irish novels are popular in translation in Mainland China, especially Colm Toibin and Sally Rooney, whose works have sold more than 120,000 copies there.
The city boasts the Irish Chamber of Commerce, which is active in promoting trade, investment and people-to-people exchanges between Hong Kong and Ireland.
With Poland, Ireland’s economy is the envy of Europe. In 2025, its GDP grew 10.7 per cent, leaving the government with a fourth year of surplus, at 10.25 billion euros. That GDP growth was eight times the EU average.
The government prefers to use another measure of growth, Gross National Income star, 3.3 per cent last year. This excludes the substantial taxes paid by multinational companies based in Ireland. Poland’s GDP last year grew by 3.6 per cent.
Such has been the accumulated wealth that, in 2014, the government set up the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. By the middle of 2025, it managed funds of more than US$28 billion.
For more than a century from the Great Famine of the 1840s, Ireland was a nation of emigrants. In 1841, its population stood at 8.17 million, higher than the level today.
The economic boom has turned Ireland into a nation of immigrants. According to the 2022 census, 20 per cent of the population were born outside the country, mainly from other EU countries, India and Brazil, as well as Hong Kong and Mainland China.
When the Irish ministers cross the world, they will speak to the descendants of those who emigrated from the island over the last two centuries. The country today is barely recognisable from the one the migrants left.
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