St Patrick’s Day returns to Ireland after two-year hiatus

Hundreds of thousands of Irish and international visitors were to celebrate St Patrick’s Day in Ireland on Thursday after a two-year pause in festivities due to the coronavirus.

Events celebrating Ireland’s patron saint were some of the first to be called off in 2020 as mass gatherings were shelved, pubs closed and international travel stopped.

But restrictions have been lifted, and organisers are billing this year’s celebrations as a symbol of the country’s return after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coordinators have promised the centrepiece parade through the streets of central Dublin on Thursday will be bigger and better than ever.

Police patrol in the popular Temple bar area of Dublin on March 17, 2020, as St Patrick's Day festivities were cancelled and pubs shut in reaction to the pandemic.

Interim director of the St Patrick’s Festival Anna McGowan said this year’s event – boosted by extra city and government funding – would be “Ireland’s reopening moment”.

The spectre of fresh COVID measures has hung over events in Dublin, which in normal times would take 18 months to organise.

While planning had been going on in the background, it was only in January that the government...