Lord Alton, a former Liberal MP, has criticised what he described as the "cold intellectual rationalism" which had allowed what could be termed a "callous indifference" to the Famine in Ireland. He compared the attitude of politicians and economists then to that of the western world today towards developing countries.
Speaking at a special commemoration in Knock, Co Mayo, for the Famine dead of the west of Ireland, he recalled how pleas by Daniel O'Connell to end the export of Irish wheat and to create jobs fell on deaf ears, and Ireland "became a country of corpses and walking skeletons".
Mgr Denis Faul said thousands of Protestants as well as Catholics had died of starvation during the famine, and he paid tribute to the clergy of all denominations who had died ministering to the people.