Many months passed in the beginning of the famine and many thousands died before the government would admit the necessity of direst financial help. When help was given it was free soup kitchens and public works that were designated to be useless so that they would not interfere with private enterprise. By 1847 half the population was being fed at public expense. (Beckett, 1966). With the exception of a few notable cases, the rich felt their only obligation was to make a donation to charity. After, they were free to party and hunt as they had always done. The government pushed much of the responsibility to feed the poor on the shoulders of charities. Religious groups and charities throughout Ireland set up soup kitchens. In some places soup was so watery that doctors would advise people not to eat it. Relief operations made very little impression on starvation, contributed to the spread of disease, and enriched many engaged in trading. The British set up emergency food deposits in 1846, but forbade them to be opened while food could still be obtained from private dealers (Gibbon, 1975). The British spent seven million pounds in direct relief, eight million in the purchase of maize from America, and private charity raised another million pounds. By the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1847, no peasant with a holding of one-quarter an acre or more was eligible for relief. This resulted in tens of thousands of farmers parting with their land.
       Hundreds of thousands of men worked construction roads in places there was no need for them (Costigan, 1969). Impoverished peasants were asked to build roads that went from nowhere to nowhere for such low wages that they could hardly buy enough food to live on. Public works were not available for many people. In May of 1846, 400,000 people applied for 13,000 jobs. They were building roads where nobody ever traveled, starting anywhere and ending nowhere. Bridges were built where no rivers flowed and piers were built where no ships' sails were ever seen. Some of them can still be found today (MacManus, 1944). In March of 1847 the public works were abandoned.