A brief study of the cottiers and the conacre system of land rental gives an additional insight in how the failure of a single crop had such catastrophic results in Ireland.
   Very briefly, cottiers rented very small plots from farmers who in turn rented from landowners. Rental to the farmers was usually paid by work, leaving little time for the cottiers to adequately tend their own small plots. Hence the overwhelming dependance on the potato. When the crop failed the entire rural economic system descended into a maelstrom.
Massive evictions took place, cabins torn down, and the landless hungry left initially to fend for themselves. The social conventions of the time held that a person;s station in life was determined by personal application (although it is obvious that inheritance of money and education effectively determined social class and made upward mobility almost impossible )A reluctance to introduce viable measures to alleviate starvation was due to the inabilty of the government of the day to accept responsibility and for fear of creating longterm dependancy. When the scale of the problem was finally realised, the measures adopted for the most part were totally inadequate and too late.
    To state it was a deliberate policy of genocide is simply not supported by the facts. It was a culmination of population growth,the creation of a huge landless class of labourers, rapacious landlords, potato blight,and finally an administration slow to recognise the true scale of the problem and woefully inadaquate in it's response.
The true scale of the catastrophe makes it hardly surprising that views have become polarised especially in the light of Independance the following century.