A few notes from Cecil Woodham-Smith`s book the Great Hunger, the English lady notes that, "No issue provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation"

To further quote her, "although the potato crop failed Ireland was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population.
Burt that was a "money crop" and not a"food crop", and could not be interfered with.

One of the most remarkable facts about the famine period is that there was an average monthly export of food from Ireland worth 100,000 pounds sterling, throughout the famine years Ireland remained a net exporter of food.