One of the problems in discussing the Famine is that unless you are Irish and/or live in Ireland, you are not talking about history - something that happened a century and a half or so ago - how the famine was handled changed Ireland socially and culturally.
I have lived here for fifteen years and have collected songs and social history in this area for 40 years.
I cannot think of a single family that has net been effected by emigration.
I sat in a music session last night and realised that there was not one person in the pub who had not worked abroad at one time or another.
I've just annotated our collection of 400+ songs, a large percentage of them locally made emigration songs, not harking back to the Famine, but reflecting the period from 1850 to the present day. New songs are still being composed; a Country and Western singer in Connemara is composing emigration songs in Irish to reflect was is happening there today "whining dirges, no doubt!.
Because of the way the Famine was mishandled (some believe deliberately) Ireland was never able to recover it (if this is true, think of the consequences if Ireland had been forced to participate in the W.W.1, obscenity, as was intended).
Nobody is claiming that all this is entirely the fault of Britain; Irish political incompetence and corruption added to an already unsolvable problem.
Britain's two great legacies to Ireland were Immigration and sectarian conflict - the Celtic Tiger was a bit of a miracle really, but the bankers and politicians managed to kick that one to death fairly efficiently.
Jim Carroll