John Downes looks at the organisation and sponsorship behind the St Patrick's Day festivities

St Patrick's Day provides Irish people around the world with the chance to celebrate their country, their culture and their origins.

Yet the festival also generates a significant amount of money in this State in a number of important ways. Last year, for example, the organisers of the St Patrick's Festival in Dublin estimated that it was worth €79.49 million to the economy of Dublin city alone. Given that it necessitated a total investment of only €2.5 million last year, it clearly represented excellent value for money.

So what does it take to organise the largest St Patrick's Day festival in Ireland? And what do the companies involved in sponsoring the various events get in return?

"It is always a 12to 15-month cycle," says Ms Maria Moynihan, chief executive of the festival in Dublin, which started on March 11th and ended two days ago. "We even have stuff in the pipeline now for 2005. Over the summer months, the programme starts to come together. It has to be in place by August, so June and July are the critical months. This is so we can plan our finances and start our overseas publicity," she explains.

"This is very very important, getting tourists here. We are trying to get people here for the weekend and to promote Ireland, so we need to have the information on what will be going on 10 months in advance."

Ms Moynihan has an eight-strong team of people working full-time on the festival. These include an artistic director, a marketing director, a participation director (who encourages schools, in particular, to get involved) and an office manager.

As the year progresses, this team is complemented by others, including more than 200 volunteers. These are frequently students who are interested in getting some hands-on experience in their chosen field of study, with the value of their work also factored into calculations of the total final cost of the festival.

"We are competing with festivals such as Edinburgh and Rio," Ms Moynihan says. "In terms of being a tourist, the key question when buying is, 'is it genuine?'"

According to Ms Moynihan, the marketing of the festival also employs three key messages:

• Letting people know that the festival is happening this year, so that they might also consider coming to next year's festival;

• This is Ireland, this is the so-called Irish welcome;

• The St Patrick's Day festival is just the start of festivals across the country.

Another important part of the success of the festival is the involvement of sponsors, she says.

"We would start to pitch to companies after each festival for the following year. We have 53 different sponsors at the moment, with different categories of sponsors. These would be people who use the event to make contact with an audience.

"We had an overall budget of €1.9 million for this year's festival but, if we had to pay for everything, it would have cost approximately €2.7 million. We have a lot of in-kind sponsorship as well as cash."

One company that has become involved in the festival is Lyons Tea.

"You can't get more Irish than St Patrick's Day. We've been involved for the last two years," Lyons marketing director Mr Alan Byrne says. "You have a captive audience of at least 600,000-700,000 people. And then you have a huge amount of people who see it on television."

While involvement in the festival requires a certain (undisclosed) financial outlay, he stresses that the benefits of being seen by such a huge audience mean it is very cost-effective.