My admittedly shallow understanding of the history is that the response of the ruling and propertied class to the catastrophic loss of crops was to take it out of the hides of those who had nothing, kicking them off the land and leaving them to starve to death. It was a callous, brutal attitude that yielded nothing to the landowners, and left a legacy of bitterness that will last a long, long time, and has a lot to do with the deeply felt Socialist sympathies of many of the Irish. The bastards who treated people this way deserve to rot in Hell. The very worst side of the capitalist system that I believe very deeply in.
I concur absolutely, except I would also add “racist” to “callous” and “brutal”.