The second link in Spaw's posting contains a sidebar quote from Eamon de Buitléar which I can confirm, having been around at the time.

The featuring of the bodhrán in "Sive" aroused considerable comment in Dublin at the time, as it had probably hardly ever been heard outside Kerry. My Irish teacher (who retired in 1965 and was therefore presumably born in 1900) was a Kerryman who explained to my class that the bodhrán was used by the wren boys, who go from farm to farm on St Stephen's day dressed up and playing music in exchange for drinks. It was not commonly used in traditional music at the time outside this context, notwithstanding occasional appearances in recordings as identified in the link referred to.

It was in fact de Buitléar himself who, by his playing of the bodhrán in Ceoltóirí Cualann, the embryonic Chieftains, did more than anyone else to popularise the bodhrán.

It's an instrument that gets a hard time, as we all know, but the very fact that it has been able to establish itself is to me proof that the tradition is alive and well, not stuck in a jar of academic or nationalist formaldehyde. The same is true of the bouzouki, introduced in the late sixties by Johnny Moynihan and/or Andy Irvine and/or Donal Lunny and/or Mick Moloney (delete as appropriate).