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The Boys of Foley Street | RTÉ Radio 1 Extra

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Saturday 27th June 2015 at 5pm – The Boys of Foley Street

This documentary was made into an interactive piece of theatre at the 2012 Dublin Theatre Festival. Using the same idea and title, (The Boys of Foley Street) the theatre piece featured excerpts from this documentary and re-enacted some of the scenes.

In 1975, for a documentary about ‘Boot Boys in Foley St’ Pat Kenny interviewed four boys aged between thirteen and sixteen. Boot boys were gangs of youths who shaved their heads and wore nailed boots.

All the boys interviewed were involved in petty crime and the documentary told the story of this slum area in the North Inner City and the lack of opportunity afforded to these children.

Thirteen years later – in 1988 – Pat Kenny and producer Kieron Sheedy went back and interviewed those four children – who were now men in their mid twenties. All four men were unemployed. All four had been to jail.

Twenty years on from those second recordings – Documentary on One’s Ciaran Cassidy – is making a follow up documentary – wondering what happened to these children?

First broadcast Sunday 18th May 2008