This year, Limerick launches the third installment of the I.NY Festival from October 16 to 20 at various venues throughout the city. The programme for 2019 features a diverse line-up from actor/writer/politician Malachy McCourt to Irish fiddler Martin Hayes.

An anchor event within Fáilte Ireland's Global Irish Festival Series, The I.NY Project explores and celebrates the relationship between Ireland and New York, one story at a time. The annual I.NY Festival is one of the central elements of the I.NY Project, bringing the unique relationship between Ireland and New York to life in all its diversity and richness, history and modernity.

Focusing on the personal stories of the Irish in and of New York, I.NY welcomes and tells those stories through conversation and debate, interviews and performances, cultural and political discourse, music, literature, film, fashion, food, sport and arts events.

This year's festival programme will feature a line-up of dynamic, unique and sometimes challenging events with key contributions from a host of guests who personify the depth and breadth of the Ireland New York relationship. Headline guests include writer and actor Malachy McCourt, NYPD Commissioner James P. O'Neill, and the return to the festival of Dr Jane O'Meara Sanders, political activist and senior adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders. Also appearing will be Limerick-born Booker Prize-nominated author Kevin Barry, WearingIrish founder and Siegel+Gale Global CMO Margaret Molloy, world-renowned fiddle player Martin Hayes and award-winning author and broadcaster John Kelly.

Other panellists, moderators, speakers and performers travelling to Limerick for the festival include Dr Miriam Nyhan, historian and director of Irish American Studies at Glucksman Ireland House at NYU, J.P. O'Meara, VP at Ralph Lauren New York as well as Brooklyn and Manhattan club owner and LGBTQ activist Brenda Breathnach, Google Creative Labs' Mary Leonard, Qool DJ Marv of HBO and NYC's Soho House, Rugby Union New York Founder/Owner James Kennedy, Irish Times Arts & Culture Editor and Inside Politics podcast host Hugh Linehan and IrishCentral Managing Editor Kate Hickey, plus Irish DJs Donal Dineen, Aoife Nic Canna and Niall Colgan, and a return to I.NY for Dublin's Mother DJs.

Check out the complete line-up here.