A film about what is happening in the rural western half of the Republic of Ireland today, nearly half a century after the landlords left. With independence came the kind of peasant society the Irish had desired through the centuries of occupation. Men worked their own small plots of land, women cared for large families, the priest sorted out the complications of this world and the next. But the world was moving on, in the United States, in Britain and in recent years up the road in Dublin. People everywhere were earning more. The emigrants came back on holiday first in better suits, then in bigger cars. A sense of having missed out turned to discontent and discontent to 'despair. Tonight's documentary looks at the struggle to save western Ireland, a struggle which is the more exciting because it is so directly against the modern current. Commentary spoken by DEREK HART
