Well, bakelite isn't quite the same as modern plastics - it's got more of a glassy texture, and tends to break more easily than modern plastic. Oddly this doesn't have the same texture as other bakelite items I've handled, it's much closer to modern plastic.
I looked at the page for Ryan's Daughter and you're right, those are actual IG71s, not even 71/84s. Nice touch! Michael Collins and Rebel Heart, the only two onscreen depictions of the Rising that I've seen, just went with a mix of short and long Lee-Enfields and Gewehr 98s. They could have gone with relatively common 71/84s, although I suspect there's not alot of 11mm Mauser blanks out there.
Interesting bit of historial trivia, the Howth Mausers were smuggled in by Boer War veteran and novelist Erksine Childers, who wrote a very popular thriller novel called The Riddle Of The Sands (voted one of the best 100 novels of all time), who at the time of the Rising had actually returned to the British military and was serving in London. He later rejoined the Irish nationalist movement and was executed by the Irish Free State government during the Civil War in 1922.
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