TOURISM IRELAND SAYS it expects up to 400 famous sites around the world to go green on St. Patrick’s Day as part of the tenth year of the Global Greening initiative.

The now annual project started at the Sydney Opera House in 2010 but has expanded hugely since then to include other global landmarks in all corners of the world. 

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Tourism Ireland CEO Niall Gibbons said the agency currently has 288 global sites already going green this year but that he expects 400 to sign up by the day itself. 

Last year, 300 landmark sites across 50 countries were involved in the initiative. 

Some of the new sites included this year are Victoria Falls, the Nations Tower in Abu Dhabi and the Shizuoka Stadium in Japan, where Ireland will play the host nation in this year’s Rugby World Cup.

Last year, some of the sites that were included for the first time were the Space Needle in Seattle, the fountains in London’s Trafalgar Square and the San Mamés stadium in Bilbao.

Tourism Ireland Nicosia Town Hall in Cyprus went green in 2018. Tourism Ireland

Gibbons said today that there had been a somewhat “tongue-in-cheek” request to see Buckingham Palace go green but that this was politely declined.

The tourism chief added that the project cost is less than €30,000 and is thanks in large part to Irish people living abroad and the Department of Foreign Affairs. 

“The Irish diaspora have played a key role in relation to this, there are 70 million people abroad but the Irish societies in places like Philadelphia and Chicago and Sydney, Singapore play a huge role in driving this project forward as well as the local tourism Ireland teams and our ambassadors and consuls general,” he said.