RTÉ Documentaries

RTE Investigates follows the lives of rough sleepers and homeless hostel users, examining the challenges they face and the difficulties in getting off the streets.

In 1969, tensions that had been bubbling in Northern Ireland erupted in a conflict between Catholics and Protestants during the Apprentice Boys Parade, in Derry. The parade marked a Protestant victory over Catholic attackers in 1689. The violence which ensued soon became known as the Battle of the Bogside. But when word of the three day long battle reached the Irish Republic, the government under Taoiseach Jack Lynch decided to intervene. GunPlot examines the tumultuous 16 months which followed, culminating in the dismissal of ministers Neil Blaney and Charles J. Haughey who were accused of illegal attempts to bring arms into the Republic to give to Catholics in the North to defend themselves against rising violence.

Ardal O'Hanlon explores the reasons behind Irish people's colourful vocabulary. Is swearing a sign of intelligence? Do Irish people swear more than other nationalities? What is happening in our brains when we swear? And how does our history, our religion and our culture continue to shape the words we use?

t’s been 30 years since the world was introduced to the Dublin suburb of Barrytown. The film version of The Commitments became a global phenomenon, not only because of the music, but because of the connection it made with people who’d never even heard of the Northside, let alone Barrytown. This fictional suburb and its characters were a microcosm – not only of Dublin or Ireland at that time, but of ordinary lives: their dreams and ambitions, their triumphs and failures – all of it documented in Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy: The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van.

Partition, 1921, tells the story of how Ireland came to be to be partitioned from the perspective of the British and unionist politicians who divided Ireland. The memory of partition, as Fearghal McGarry of Queen's University Belfast explains, has continued to trouble Ireland over the past century.

Sculptor Rowan Gillespie's most recent work is a memorial to the thousands of Irish women who were sent to the penal colonies of Tasmania in the 19th century. The documentary Shape of History follows Gillespie's process and digs deeper into a fascinating period in history.

Sold - The Eircom Shares Saga is a cautionary and timely tale of how the hope and enthusiasm of the Telecom Éireann flotation in 1999 ended in disaster, piles of debt, and losses for the average citizens who dipped their toes into the stock market. It’s a story given contemporary relevance by the emergence of the National Broadband Strategy and all of its attendant frustrations. The documentary is an ensemble piece featuring characters from every walk of Irish life who all shared in what ultimately proved to be a collective economic folly in the summer of 1999, one with far reaching consequences for the state of telecommunications in Ireland in the twenty first century.

Featuring unseen interviews from before his death, the extraordinary story of the racehorse owner and punter, Barney Curley - from his tough origins as a Catholic in Fermanagh, through his audacious betting coups and his charitable decision to “give a little back” by donating all of his winnings to charity and die penniless. “It was never about the money, it was all for the challenge” On 26 June 1975, an obscure racecourse in Ireland became the setting for an astonishing gambling coup that would go down in history and establish its orchestrator as one of the sport’s most feared and enigmatic characters. An unfancied horse called Yellow Sam romped home at 20-1 but, at the track that day, few even knew what had really happened, nor was anyone aware of the origins of the drama or its true motives, buried as they were in decades of Northern Irish history. With exclusive access to the fascinating character who pulled off one of the most well-orchestrated and audacious gambles in sporting history, this film will be driven by a heist-like narrative arc and tell the story of a man driven by extraordinary times to do incredible things. The film will also explore the illuminating origins of the risk-taker in question and place him in the context of the history of the people of his region. That man was Barney Curley and he was a product of Northern Ireland.

Steps of Freedom is no normal documentary: it is a social history of Ireland told through dance; it is a revelatory experience that reveals ephemeral aspects of the Irish character; and it is an entertainment show featuring stunning performances by some of the very best dancers of the day.

How Ireland Rocked the 70s looks at the evolution of the festival circuit in Ireland during the 1970s, a decade in which rock music – national and international – began to take real root here. Against a back-drop of political instability, the greater penetration of popular culture into Ireland saw, by the end of the 1970s, the development of an nascent national scene and the emergence of a golden generation of local bands primed for export.