I'm sure currachs are still being used up the West Coast, I hope to get to the Aran Islands next year so I'll have a look. When I was a teenager Tim Severin more or less gave me his currach, St. Finbarr, which he used to research his ideas for the Brendan Boat. I fixed up the skin and had the use of it for a few seasons before it was damaged beyond repair during a storm. We'd left it upside down in the traditional manner at the top of the shore but a storm surge carried it along the shingle beach, ripping the gunnels off. I can distinctly remember a family visit to seeing it being made in The Magherees, in Kerry. I think the builder was a Mr. Goodwin. I was disappointed recently to see the curraghs in that area now are built purely for racing, skinned in thin fibreglass and an awful shape, to my eye, compared to the beautiful traditional craft I was familiar with.
Taulua is written up in Wooden Boat issue no.72, I've seen a pdf of some of the article. They do reference seeing the Brendan Boat, I think in Exeter, it must have been stored there after the voyage. It is now in a folk museum in East County Clare and well worth a visit.
Taulua is definitely a plant-based currach compared to the 49 cow hides and vats of wool grease that went into the St. Brendan, both boats sharing the trait of having smells that the builders would never have got out of their nostrils! Two pictures of St. Brendan; from the book and the website of the National Museum, that's my mum in the construction photo in the foreground in the red smock.
Any skin on frame junk rig boats out there now?