Ireland is an island. The Irish didn't have to go hungry. They could always fish.
Yeah... I think I just figured out why some people might not believe that other people bought something.
Ireland was the breadbasket of the British Islands and was a net exporter of food to England even during the famine years, if the food that was grown in Ireland during the famine had stayed in Ireland the people would not have starved in the hundreds of thousands. The reason the potato blight was a problem is that was all the people could grow in the poor soil they were allowed to farm for personal use.
Suggesting that they could have fished makes "let them eat cake" sound positively lovely.
Ireland is indeed an island, but only a small percentage of the population was within walking distance of the coast. It is more than 250 miles from Dingle to Derry and a hundred or more miles wide. Pretty extreme distances for a pedestrian population with no network of Roman roads and certainly no refrigeration to preserve the fish.
Further, most fish are in deep water, too far from the shore to be reached in the small hide covered boats available to the poor. People further inland lacked the money to purchase fish or any other food even if it had been available.
River and lake fishing and fowling was not an option either. The (Protestant) land owners owned the fish and game. They had enacted severe anti poaching laws and executions, beatings and imprisonment were not uncommon for offenders.
What's grown in Ireland today? Do you honestly believe Ireland was less fertile than say...Israel...which has turned desert into plenitude for centuries?
How do people starve when they can fish?
RC apologists apparently don't ask themselves these questions. They just swallow the PR.