That might be so - I'm sure one way and another people have always played frame drums, and probably re-invented them any time they felt a need to make a bit of noise. I suspect that if you hunt around you'd found pictures in mediaeval manuscripts that look like bodhrans. But I think you'd be pretty hard put to find any evidence of them being used in ensemble music before the '60s.

And from the way Duffy lumps "guitars, bodhrans and basoukis" together I'd imagine he's seeing them all the same way, as innovations from around that time.

Myself I see them as good innovations, and part of a developing tradition - as a percussion instrument when you need one, a bodhran is a great thing to have available, and far better than the snare drum which tended to be used previously.

I have a suspicion that the way the bodhran is played - which is where it differs from the way frame drums are used in, for example North Africa or (native) North America, owes a lot to the influence of the way guitarists strum their instruments.