Blaming ourselves for the famine is nonsense

I CANNOT let your columnist Ryle Dwyer away with the assertion (January 12) that the Irish were to blame for the Great Famine.

As Mr Dwyer admits, “this island continued to export food even though tens of thousands of people died of starvation, malnutrition and rampant disease.”

Why was this the case? The people at the head of the government of the then British empire did not want to damage the competitiveness of British industry by diverting food to the starving Irish.