SOCIAL POLICY IN IRELAND 1500–1800

Social policy in early modern Ireland, like England, was primarily orientated towards the perennial problem of poverty. Despite the effect of war and famine, trade began to prosper in sixteenth century Ireland and continued to do so until after the Napoleonic Wars, albeit, interspersed with occasional depressions and minor famines. The effect of this growth in trade on population was explosive. Between 1672 and 1791 population more than tripled from 1.1 million to 3.8 million. England, as a result of the establishment of the Elizabethan Poor Law, in 1601, had achieved a relatively sophisticated poor relief system based on a crude categorisation according to abilities and needs, the introduction of a carceral system of discipline for the able‐bodied poor, and the compulsory levying of a poor rate. Ireland relied primarily on a system of punishments supplemented by proselytization, and tended to treat the poor as a unitary category, with the exception of children.