February 28th, 1846: The Relief Commissioners' issue instructions on the formation and duties of temporary committees. Their main function is to raise funds with which to purchase and distribute the food imported by the government. The money provided by local subscription can be matched by and equal amount from funds placed at the disposal of the Lord Lieutenant.
However, "gratuitous relief shall be afforded only to those persons who are entirely incapable of giving a day's work, and who have no able bodied relative on whom they are dependent, and these cases only in which their reception in the workhouse of the union to which they belong, is, from want of room, impracticable."
A correspondent writes from Newcastle on the Tipperary Waterford border "It is really frightful to contemplate the condition to which most of the inhabitants even now are reduced. The stench emitted from the (potato) pits which are thrown open is such as is calculated to infect the country with a devouring pestilence."
Thomas Gill, superintendent of roads for the Kenmare district, says he has never met men less able to work. "This, I think, proceeds from their inability to provide a sufficient quantity of food, many of them cannot procure two sufficient meals of sound potatoes in the day, and when men are pinched in such food it is impossible to expect they can give a satisfactory return of work."
Charles Trevelyan sanctions public works worth £4,100 in the Nobber district of Co Meath. One half of the cost is to be issued as a grant and the other as a loan.
He is directed by the Lords, of the Treasury "to add that if any proprietors will be benefited by these works in a greater degree than the other cess payers, their Lordships rely upon the Lord Lieutenant causing a proper communication to be made to the proprietors in question, with a view to induce them to contribute a sum of money proportioned to the superior interest they have in the works."
March 1st: Mrs Smith, of Baltiboys, writes in her Wicklow diary that "we hardly ought to be so cheerful with starvation at our door here.....
With potatoes at their present price it would take nine shillings a week to buy sufficient of them for the labourer's family he can earn at best but six shillings and there are all his other necessities. The managers who buy up the flour and meal and sell it out in the very small quantities the labourers can only buy, nearly double the cost price on the poor purchaser, and if they give credit, charge usurious interest besides a system that ruins.
March 2nd: The Tyrone Constitution fears for next season's potatoes. Experiments have shown that contaminated seed and planting in blight affected areas will produce a diseased crop.
Four cases of arms are imported for a clergyman in Killeshandra, Co Cavan.