During a NEAR FM interview with Uplift’s Campaigns Director Saoirse McHugh, listeners were this week reminded that the Irish Masters of Foxhounds Association was established in 1845 at the start of the “Irish Famine” (Great Hunger).

Between 1845 and 1852, around one million people around Ireland starved to death or died of related illnesses. This did not get in the way of fox hunters who happily continued enjoying their bloodsport.

“The Irish Masters of Foxhounds Association was established in 1845 which gives you an indication as to who this ‘sport’ is for,” Saoirse McHugh stated, going on to point out that “this is a very small minority of people who engage with this bloodsport - it’s strongly linked with the British royals, the British aristocracy and really there’s no place for it in Ireland any more.”

Programme presenter Darren J Prior added: “Just for the benefit of any of our listeners who didn’t make the connection, 1845 - that’s the time when the famine was on.”

Listen to the full 12 December 2025 Near FM interview at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFkFQxk0Wac

As the devastating humanitarian disaster unfolded, it was fun and games for fox hunters.

As documented in A Provocative Study of The Great Irish Famine in the City and County of Cork, fox hunting continued as if there was no famine at all.

While countless lay starving across the land, merciless hunters – their bellies bloated with food and wine – galloped by with about as much sympathy as they held for their doomed quarry.

The Cork Southern Reporter of March 13, 1847 best captured the shocking contrast: “The sound of the huntsman’s horn and the yelping pack mingle in terrible discordance with the groans of the dying parent and the cries of children perishing for lack of food.”

In A Complete History of the Westmeath Hunt, we are told that: “While the rich and wealthy lived in luxurious country mansions and could indulge in feasting, sport and leisure, their tenants lived in wretched poverty and in danger of starvation” and that “ladies and gentlemen on horseback pursuing foxes with their packs of hounds became a symbol of British oppression of the Irish peasantry in the eyes of many Irish nationalists.”

The hunters’ shameful focus on fun, as the poor perished, is further highlighted in A History Of The Kildare Hunt from 1876: “There was misery everywhere. The Kildare Hunt huntsman once told me that his sufferings were great in Kilkenny during the famine years, when he saw starving people and yet had to feed the hounds.”

A Drogheda Independent column focusing on the shameful continuation of hunting for sport during the Irish Famine referred to the Ward Union stag hunt as well as the following fox hunts - Louth Hounds, Meath Hounds, Duleek Hounds, Gormanstown Harriers, Fingal Hounds and Trim Hounds
https://banbloodsports.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/hunters-enjoyed-themselves-during-irish-famine-while-the-poor-perished/

The column noted: "It appears the Ward Union Staghounds were in fact in existence in November of 1846. This was at a time of the Great Irish Famine in Ireland and there are many references to the exploits of these hunts and the 'enjoyment' of the participating gentry, while thousands were laid wasted along the verges of the roads and streets of Ireland." 

SEE ALSO

Uplift urges Sinn Fein to “Ban Colonial Fox Hunting”
https://banbloodsports.wordpress.com/2025/12/11/uplift-urges-sinn-fein-to-ban-colonial-fox-hunting/
Sign and share the Uplift petition
https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/petition-to-ban-fox-hunting-in-ireland

TAKE ACTION

Help get fox hunting banned in Ireland.

Please contact your local Fianna Fail / Fine Gael and Sinn Fein TDs and urge them to vote in favour of Ruth Coppinger TD’s Animal Health & Welfare (Ban On Fox Hunting) Bill on 17th December. Find contact details - listed by constituency and also alphabetically - at 
https://banbloodsports.wordpress.com/2025/12/11/urge-ff-fg-sinn-fein-tds-to-vote-in-favour-of-ban-fox-hunting-bill/

Contact the leaders of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein. Tell them to vote in favour of Deputy Coppinger’s bill – or at the very least, allow a free vote.

Micheál Martin TD
Leader, Fianna Fail
Email: micheal.martin@oireachtas.ie; info@fiannafail.ie
Tel: 01 619 4000
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michealmartintd/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/@MichealMartinTD

Simon Harris TD
Leader, Fine Gael
Telephone: 01 281 3727
Email: simon.harris@oireachtas.ie; finegael@finegael.ie
X: http://www.twitter.com/SimonHarrisTD
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DeputySimonHarris

Mary Lou McDonald TD
Leader, Sinn Fein
Tel: (01) 727 7102
Email: marylou.mcdonald@oireachtas.ie, admin@sinnfein.ie
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaryLouMcDonald
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MaryLouMcDonaldTD

Keep hunters off your land

If you are a landowner, make your land off-limits to hunters. Find out more about how to do this at http://www.banbloodsports.com/farmers.htm

Watch and share our campaign videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5_ixsrg48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBxQdL6VQiQ

Hunters’ focus on fun while Irish people starved to death

“The Hunt was again fortunate in finding another Kildare man as Master. It is hardly necessary to recall the fact that the year of Mr O’Connor Henchy’s acceptance of that responsible position was that of the disastrous failure of the potato crop in Ireland, that time of famine which brought such misery on the country and had so profound an effect upon its fortunes. It is not surprising, I think, to find a dearth of information upon the sport of those dreadful years, years of starvation intensified by political trouble, by State trials and suspensions of Habeas Corpus Acts. It is a wonder indeed that fox-hunting was found possible at all, and there was at one moment a question of suspending it altogether. Certainly the difficulties of the Mastership must have been increased tenfold, and the Kildare Hunt owes a great debt of gratitude to Mr O’Connor Henchy for coming forward at such a time to keep the long tradition of Kildare sport unbroken. As a fact the famine was felt more severely in other parts of Ireland than in Kildare, though, of course, there was misery everywhere…[Kildare Hunt huntsman Stephen Goodall] once told me that his sufferings were great in Kilkenny during the famine years, when he saw starving people and yet had to feed the hounds.” from A History Of The Kildare Hunt

“We are well used to the images of poverty and starvation, evictions and destitution when we think of the Famine but we rarely realise that for many, life as they lived it with its hunting parties, dancing, gatherings, fashions, concerts and sumptuous dining continued as if there was no Famine.” from a report on the launch of Ed O’Riordan’s book ‘In Terrible Discordance – A Provocative Study of The Great Irish Famine in the City and County of Cork’. November 2011.

“During the Great Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s, the contrast between the lives of the Anglo-Irish Protestant landed gentry and Gaelic Catholic tenant farmers was stark. While the rich and wealthy lived in luxurious country mansions and could indulge in feasting, sport and leisure, their tenants lived in wretched poverty and in danger of starvation. The deaths of a million of the Gaelic Irish during the disaster and the emigration of millions more in the latter half of the 19th century led to bitter resentment, violent subversion and land agitation against the landlord elite. Ladies and gentlemen on horseback pursuing foxes with their packs of hounds became a symbol of British oppression of the Irish peasantry in the eyes of many Irish nationalists.” from A Complete History Of The Westmeath Hunt From Its Foundation by Edward F. Dease, 1898.