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The colourful parade with floats representing almost every region of the republic set off from Cheetham Irish Heritage Centre to make the two-mile journey into the city centre.

Pipe and brass bands, Irish dancers, and even a Hell's-Angel style St Patrick look-alike astride a Triumph motorcycle, joined festival beauty queens, ceilidh musicians and schoolchildren.

Happy children - most of them unlikely to have ever set foot on Irish soil - dressed in the colours of the towns and cities their parents, grandparents and even great grandparents called home, smiled and waved tricolours.

Elderly men, unlikely to ever shake the Irish soil from their soles, proudly held aloft the banners of their Irish associations while fellow sons of Eire lined the streets, their eyes moist with tears.

The parade wound its way from the Queen's Road centre, along Cheetham Hill Road and into Deansgate passing the city's department stores before reaching Manchester Town Hall, in Albert Square.

Lord Mayor Tony Burns, a Wearsider of Irish descent, welcomed the parade from the town hall entrance with other VIPs.

Eventually the crowds dispersed to sample the wares of the traders in the festival market in the square and stock up on white pudding, soda bread and foaming pints of the black stuff.