His legacy sees cultural icons lit up in green, and parades are held from Montserrat to Macroom.
On his feast day, millions of people claim to have a drop of Irish blood in them — and millions more down a drop of Irish drink.
But apparently St Patrick isn’t iconic enough to be a world record-setter.
Mike Finn, who co-wrote the TV hit Killinaskully, aims to have at least 250 St Patricks in Limerick’s parade.
But he said: “We contacted the Guinness Book of Records people and they informed us they could not recognise a record of people dressed as St Patrick because it was not iconic enough to be recognised by them. The Guinness Book of Records is a stamp of approval which we thought we would get, but it seems that St Patrick is not good enough for Guinness.”
Finn received an email from the ironically named Kimberly Patrick of Guinness World Records, saying: “We think you will appreciate that, with costume records, we must limit these categories to those which have a very specific, standard, iconic dress and this unfortunately is not the case with St Patrick.”