Sonny Lalor sits down with writer, director, and journalist, Shaunagh Connaire.
In Ireland today, emigration no longer feels solely like an adventure for the young. Instead, it feels
like a logical response to a housing market which has locked out an entire generation. According to
the Economic and Social Research Institute (2023), only one-third of people under the age of 40 own
their own homes. As a student in Dublin, I see this reality everywhere. Many of my friends and I are
reluctantly planning our exits, hoping that moving abroad is the only way to eventually afford a life
back home.
Against this backdrop, I spoke with Shaunagh Connaire, a two-time Emmy-nominated journalist
turned filmmaker from Longford who moved abroad in the late 2000s. Since leaving Ireland,
Connaire has built an extensive international career, producing for the BBC and Channel 4 before
later working as Director of Communications and media for George and Amal Clooney.
In the summer of last year, Connaire released her debut short film titled Brown Bread, a work rooted
in the emotional complexities of Irish emigration. The film brings together a generational span of
Irish acting talent, with Katie McGrath, Fionnuala Flanagan and Dermot Crowley. While the cast's
calibre is immediately apparent on screen, Connaire admitted that directing such established figures
was a challenge. “It was different trying to direct people like Fionnuala Flanagan, who really doesn’t
need directing; she’s so amazing.” Shot in her parents' home in Longford, with an all-Irish cast and
crew, the project draws directly from Connaire’s own experience of living abroad. That work has not
gone unnoticed; earlier this year, she announced that Disney had acquired rights to the short.
Reflecting on her early years, Connaire described her first apartment in Dublin as “a bit of a shithole,
to be fair,” though it was manageable at the time. The financial reality of emigrating, however, was
much harsher. “I remember moving to London and being like, oh my god, I can’t afford to be here.”
Life was reduced in many ways to the bare necessities. “I do remember a time in London where I was
just eating hard-boiled eggs because I was just so broke”. However, despite these trials, she stayed, “I
was just chasing the dream. And even when you have no money, you kind of will find it eventually”.
Connaire’s path was anything but linear. After graduating from Commerce and French at UCD, she
worked briefly as an accountant with KPMG in Dublin, a role she now describes herself as the
“world’s worst accountant” in. It was only after this stint that she pivoted towards journalism,
completing a master's degree at Goldsmiths and relocating to East London.
Her early career, like many, demanded sustained effort instead of instant reward. Speaking about her
time at the BBC, Connaire described her breakthrough as “lucky”, but emphasised discipline and work ethic over talent alone. “It wasn’t down to being the best, it was down to being incredibly hard-
working. My motto there was that I would always be the first in the office and the last to leave.”
Working as an Irish woman in Britain did bring certain subtle pressures to assimilate. She recalled
being mocked for using the phrase “I’m after drinking a cup of tea” during a piece to camera. At the
time, she admitted, “I didn’t really have the knowledge or confidence to push back on that”. Distance
and time have since sharpened her perspective. “I think the more you move away, the more Irish
you actually feel”. Her advice to the next generation of emigrants strives for authenticity: “Don’t stray
from who you are, don’t shake your Irishness.”
These tensions between identity and distance formed the emotional core of Brown Bread. Though fictional, the film is shaped by Connaire’s real-life experience of being unable to attend her godmother's funeral due to US visa restrictions. While applying for a US Green card, her passport
was retained by the authorities, a bureaucratic barrier with became a physical one. Sitting alone in New York while mourning a loss in Longford, professional success rang hollow. “When my godmother
passed away, and I was sitting in New York, I was so sad because all I wanted to do was not be in an
East Village apartment in New York working this Hollywood Job, all I wanted to do was drink a cup of
tea in her house in Longford.”
Rather than using the Hollywood melodramatic approach, Brown Bread opts to embrace the quiet
emotional language of Irish domestic life. Love and grief are communicated through routine, shared
space, and silence. “You don’t hear the words, but you feel it”, Connaire noted. By focusing as much
on the protagonist, Áine’s absence as well as her return, the film captures the emotional dissonance”
of emigration, the guilt of not being there. As Connaire points out, the impact of absence doesn’t just
come from moving abroad, “you can just leave Longford” and still feel the same severance from your
roots.
Now living in Lisbon, closer to Ireland but still not quite home, Connaire continues to navigate these
themes. Recently, she was awarded the Freedom of Longford, an honour she described as “The
ultimate gong”. For those of us currently preparing for elongated journeys abroad, Brown Bread
describes a necessary, if sobering, vocabulary for what comes next. It can serve as a reminder that
emigration isn’t just a career move, it’s a personal story which showcases the quiet costs, absence,
guilt, and the everlasting pull back home. Home in Brown Bread isn’t just a place you left, but a
constant presence which follows you.