Ray,

You are talking about the documentary itself, which was a repeat of an earlier showing. Ireland (or a large proportion of it) became independent in 1921. The Free State was declared a Republic in 1949, but was not under DeValera at that particular time. It was one of the few periods between 1927 when Dev came back into parliament after a Civil War and the 1960s when he stepped down, when he had been voted out of office. That's probably more detail than you wanted to know.

Ard Mhacha is referring (I presume) to an acompanying program of archive footage from the BBC which was shown for the first time last Friday. You didn't hang around for Altan (including Frankie Kennedy), Sharon Shannon, Martin Hayes & Denis Cahill then Ard?