St Patrick’s Day gives 16% boost to Irish on-trade
Irish pubs and restaurants recorded a 16% boost in trading figures on St Patrick’s Day (17 March) as patrons celebrated the national holiday.
Despite trade falling midweek, the Irish hospitality sector saw a major spike on Tuesday as locals and international visitors marked the national holiday ‘in style’, according to payments and business management platform Clover, operated by Fiserv.
The point-of-sale data was anonymised and drawn from 365 Clover-enabled hospitality venues across the Republic of Ireland, representing approximately one in every 20 licensed pubs in the country.
Transactions on the day also ran 39% ahead of the average Saturday in March 2026, underlining the commercial significance of the day for Irish hospitality businesses.
The performance on St Patrick’s Day appears to be even more significant considering the first two weekends in March had seen Ireland host the final two matches of this year’s Six Nations Rugby Championship, with tens of thousands of Welsh and Scottish fans joining Irish supporters in bars and restaurants.
Dublin accounted for 21% of all national transactions recorded on the day, and consumer numbers in the city were boosted by an estimated half-a-million visitors to the Irish capital for its annual St Patrick’s Day parade.
The busiest single period of the day was 5pm, when transaction volumes peaked across the Clover network. This marked the moment the after-parade crowd moved indoors.
Joseph Walsh, vice-president of marketing and communications at Fiserv, said: “The data tells a simple story: Ireland was out in force for St Patrick’s Day, and Ireland was spending, buying more food and drink in pubs and restaurants than we did a year ago.
“With terminals firing at 5pm, a 16% increase in transactions over last year, and sales volumes more than 39% ahead of a busy Saturday in March, it’s clear that St Patrick’s Day delivers for Irish hospitality, every single year.”
In 2023, Forbes reported that St Patrick’s Day celebrations in the US generate an average spend of US$5.6 billion over the holiday, and in data released by Nielsen IQ in 2019, St Patrick’s Day was reported to be the highest-grossing day of the year for US bars and restaurants.
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