In the lead up to St. Patrick’s Day, Irish leaders and diplomats are traveling to cities across the U.S., including Boston, to celebrate ties between the two countries.

Among them is Leo Clancy, head of the state agency Enterprise Ireland, who gave GBH’s Morning Edition quite the diplomatic response when asked if Boston is the best St. Patrick’s Day city in the country.

“There’s a lot of potential for future career limitation from the answer to that question,” he said. “We don’t play favorites.”

Clancy said that while Ireland doesn't play favorites, it is making significant investments in Greater Boston’s economy, including an announcement this week that two Irish companies — Climeaction, a climate action solutions provider, and Output Sports, a sports technology company — are expanding their operations in the city.

“Boston's a really exciting area for our companies, as is all the United States,” he said. “Ireland's got a long history with the U.S. I think it has a special place in the hearts of the people in Boston, we'd like to think so.”

Both Boston and Dublin have seen investment booms, especially in areas like technology and biotech. At the same time, affordability has decreased, and both cities are struggling with skyrocketing housing prices.

“I think we're both very fortunate to be from places that are doing well,” Clancy said. “I think it is sustainable. I'm not sure about the detail in Boston, but in Ireland, we certainly applied pressure on housing that's been exacerbated by what's been a huge influx of refugees in the last couple of years who were glad to make homes in Ireland.”

The Irish government is taking significant steps to address housing affordability, he said.

“There's a national action plan on housing, which is seeing housing starts and completions grow year on year over the past couple of years and sees a lot of public money going in both to social housing and into subvention of people buying the first home from new development,” he said. “I don't think I'd ever say it was simple, but actually having a plan is, to me, a good validation of where we're headed in the future.

Clancy said he did not want to give Massachusetts prescriptive advice on addressing its own affordability problems or finding space for new migrants arriving here.

“I think the advice I would give to any jurisdiction, though, is policy certainty and focus on infrastructure and focus on the ones that make people's lives better," he said. “And also to be patient. You know, those things don't come immediately. They come with time. And we're finding that in Ireland, we have a housing industry that's had more or less collapsed by 2010, and it's being rebuilt now in a significant way.”