James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start into Deputy Murphy's time and finish within two minutes. I spent some time in Connemara and I always think about these things. We tend to think of Connemara, the west and Munster as being the most ravished areas, but the east coast suffered too. One phenomenon I came across in Connemara was that of the hungry grass. The hungry grass was a concept written about by the poet Donagh MacDonagh, who, incidentally, was the son of Thomas McDonagh, one of the signatories of the Proclamation. Thomas MacDonagh was a founder of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland, ASTI, so he was a notable figure for many reasons. The poem chronicles the hungry grass. The hungry grass was a phenomenon where people were found at the time of the Famine, delirious or dead by the side of the road, their mouths foaming with green liquid coming from them. Essentially, they lay down in desperation and tried to eat the grass because they had nothing else to eat. This was the depths of their despair. I made inquiries closer to home and found that in places such as Caragh, County Kildare, in living memory, schoolchildren were told not to cross and not to take a shortcut to school because it was a patch of hungry grass. Nobody was quite sure of the origins. Such a phenomenon occurs in south County Wicklow, in the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Mountains.

People avoid patches of hungry grass, which they believe are cursed and indicate where people died by the side of the road in desperation and from hunger. The Famine is a terribly sad chapter of our national history and casts a long shadow. It is fitting that we remember it and give it its due place in Ireland's commemorations.

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