The inspectors and the local Committees had such frequent differences, that the Board had it under serious consideration to dispense with those Committees altogether.  This idea was abandoned, but the important privilege of issuing tickets for the Works was taken away from the Committees, by an order of the Board, bearing date the 9th of December.  Besides the various other complaints forwarded to Dublin of the way in which tickets were issued by the Committees, one officer writes that he finds they had become a “saleable commodity” in the hands of the labourers.  A man, he says, obtains a ticket, disposes of it for what he can get, and goes back for another, feeling sure that amongst the numberless applicants he would not be recognized as having been given one before.  This practice, which was not and could not be carried on to any great extent, was but another proof that the works were insufficient to meet the demand for employment.  Instead of the issue of tickets by Committees it was ruled by the Board, that the inspecting officer should furnish to the check clerk, for the engineer, a list of the men to be employed on any particular work.[154]

As before remarked, an undercurrent of feeling pervaded the minds of officials that there was not at all so much real distress in Ireland as the people pretended, and that there was a great deal more food in the country than there was said to be.  This was sometimes openly asserted, but more frequently hinted at and insinuated in communications to the Board of Works and the Treasury.  It was founded partly on prejudice, and partly on ignorance of the real state of affairs, which was far worse than the most anxious friends of the people asserted, as the event, unfortunately, too truly proved.  That there was some deception and much idleness, in connection with the public works, cannot be doubted for a moment; such works being on a gigantic and ever increasing scale, effective supervision was impossible.  The mistake of many of the officials, although not of all, was, that they regarded such exceptional things as an index to the general state of the country, built theories upon them, and sent those theories up to their superiors, which helped to make them close-handed and suspicious.  Those officials did not, and, in many cases, could not sound the depths of misery into which the country had sunk; the people were dying of sheer starvation around them, whilst they were writing reports accusing them of exaggeration and idleness.  What the Rev. Jeremiah Sheahan of Clenlure, in the County Cork, said of his parishioners was equally true in hundreds of other cases:  “The most peaceable have died of want in their cabins.  More than twelve have done so in the last six days."[155]