Introduction

Large-scale government intervention was required to buffer Ireland from disaster, and intervention was, indeed, forthcoming. At several points during the Famine, over three million people, more than a third of the nation, were on relief. Thus, the paradox of the Irish Famine. Faced with a food shortage o f unprecedented dimensions, Britain responded with an unprecedented effort, and there can be little doubt that lives were saved. Yet, while some excess mortality was no doubt inevitable, the deaths of well over a million men, women and children out o f a population o f eight and a half million is astonishing.