Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day weekend, a new website called IrishCentral is launching later today (the site’s DNS seems to be propagating through, so some of you may not be able to access it now). The site, based in New York City, is aimed as a news, info and community site for people of Irish heritage around the world. It has received an undisclosed amount of funding from an interesting group of investors, including Don Keough, chairman of Allen &  Co.; Denis Kelleher, chairman of Wall Street Access; Robert Devlin, chairman of Curragh Capital; and Tom McInerney, a partner in PE firm Welsh Carson. The site’s founder has some history in serving the Irish media sector: Niall O’Dowd, founder and CEO, is also the founder and publisher of Irish America magazine and the Irish Voice newspaper. The content of both publications will now also be funneled through the IrishCentral site.

Besides news and info on Irish happenings in the country and other parts of the world (with heavy emphasis on Gaelic football and soccer matches, of course), the site will have other features like a dating site, genealogy services, and crossword puzzles. Some more info about the site here in the release.

It does have other competitors in various verticals like IrishAbroad and Irish Emigrant, among other local publications. Also, trying to be global means infrastructure for ad sales in all those locations, which is difficult to build up, as other supposedly global publications have found out, especially in this downturn.