Saturday, March 14, 2009
BRUSSELS will host a St Patrick’s Day parade for the first time this year as part of a week of related activities.
About 15,000 Irish people live in Belgium but the organisers have put the emphasis on including not just the Irish community but also other EU nations in the events.
The focus of the week will be the parade on Sunday, which will begin in the Cinquantenaire Park, a centrepiece of the EU region of Brussels.
Irish links with Belgium go back to the settlements by Irish monks in the 7th and 8th centuries and also to the establishment of the Irish College of Louvain in 1607, where generations of Irish priests were trained and that saw many famous Irish citizens, including Hugh O’Neill, on his flight into exile.
The organising committee hopes the parade and related events will receive widespread media coverage and it plans to broaden links with the 70 million Irish diaspora worldwide, and in particular with the Irish in the many cities twinned with Brussels.
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