Irish population figures:

1841 - 8,197,000, 1851 - 6,514,000, 1861 - 5,788,000, 1871 -5,398,000, 1881 - 5,146,000, 1891 - 4,680,000, 1901 - 4,459,000. Source; The 'History Today' Companion to British History.

The exact Famine death figure is unknown. It is generally estimated that about 1 million people died of starvation and (mostly) famine induced disease. The Famine was one of the major causes of the 1848 Young Ireland revolt, the founding of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1858 (which planned the Easter Rising) and the motivation for many Irishmen taking up arms. For example Dan Breen, who said "the thing that always hurt me ...was the genocide of the starvation in'47". The importance of the Famine cannot therefore be underestimated. The facts and the figures are terrible enough, there is no need to exaggerate or distort them.