My father in law born in Norway in 1950s can remember getting excited because the store had these bananas he'd heard about. He ate his first one with the skin and didn't think they were so great.
British children in the 1940s were familiar enough with bananas that they missed them during WW2 [1]. Import was banned during the war because the refrigerated ships were needed elsewhere (and the voyage was risky), but resumed in the early 1950s (?). They were widely imported from the 1880s up until WW2 [2], but I'm not sure how often the typical person would eat one.
(And I don't know how much of this British Empire trade would have spread to Ireland.)
My father in law born in Norway in 1950s can remember getting excited because the store had these bananas he'd heard about. He ate his first one with the skin and didn't think they were so great.