Tony Monaghan hopes to inspire with tales of hard knocks and rebuilding lives

Irish builder Tony Monaghan hopes his documentary about construction workers in his adopted home in the US will help inspire people to improve their lot, writes Marjorie Brennan

TONY Monaghan is no stranger to tough experiences. He was only a teenager when he left his home town of Belmullet, Co Mayo, to work on farms in England before moving on to the US, where he built up his own successful construction company. But he needed all his hard-won resilience and determination when he decided to make Rednecks and Culchies, a documentary on the lives of blue- collar workers in his adopted home of St Louis, Missouri.

“I started making it two years ago and I went around America, looking for help to do it. But nobody would take me seriously so I put a crew together myself. When we were shooting it, they kept asking for a script but I told them the script was in my head, that there are thousands of stories out there.”