Republican Loan Film in Cloughjordan

The iconic Republican Loan Film, also called the Dáil Bonds Film, can be viewed during opening hours at the MacDonagh Museum.

This seven-minute film was filmed and directed by John MacDonagh, brother of Thomas, at Saint Enda's school in Rathfarnham in 1919. John MacDonagh was at that time working for the Film Company of Ireland. This historic film was used to promote the sale of the Dáil Bonds all over Ireland and particularly in America.

The money collected from the sale of the Bonds was used to fund the new self-declared Irish Republic. In Ireland the cinema owners were prohibited by the authorities from showing this 'illegal film'. This resulted in members of the Volunteers storming the projection boxes in the cinemas and forcing the operators, at gunpoint, to take off the film they were showing and put on the Republican Loan Film. As the director and producer of the film, John MacDonagh was on the run from the authorities in 1919 and 1920.

In the film, Michael Collins, the Minister for Finance in the first Dáil, is shown accepting financial contributions from prominent Republicans and relatives of the executed 1916 leaders. Politicians featured in the film include Arthur Griffith, Joe MacDonagh, William Cosgrove, Erskine Childers, Desmond Fitzgerald (father of Garrett Fitzgerald), Eoin McNeill, Count Plunkett and Phil Shanahan from Hollyford county Tipperary, who was a Sinn Féin TD and who also fought in Jacobs Factory in 1916.

The relatives of the 1916 leaders who feature in the film include the mother and sister of Patrick Pearse, Muriel MacDonagh, the widow of Thomas, Grace Plunkett, widow of Joseph Plunkett and sister of Muriel MacDonagh, the widows of Thomas Clarke, the O'Rahilly, Eamonn Ceannt and the daughter of James Connolly.