‘Irish property should pay for Irish poverty’: accounting for the poor in pre-famine Ireland

According to Walker [2004. Expense, social and moral control. Accounting and the administration of the old poor law in England and Wales. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 23, no. 2: 85--127; 2008. Accounting, paper shadows and the stigmatised poor. Accounting, Organizations and Society 33, no. 4/5: 453--87] accounting contributed to the stigmatisation of the pauper and served to construct the social worlds of the old and new poor laws in England and Wales. Walker's encouragement of further research motivated the current examination of accounting for the poor in Ireland. The focus is on the early, pre-famine years of the Irish Poor Law, 1838--1845 -- a law whose context and content differed in several critical respects from that which prevailed in England and Wales. The study draws on data contained in the minute books of regular meetings of the Castlebar Union's Board of Governors, as well as from the Poor Law Commission's annual summary reports. Analysis of these materials suggests a context in which accounting neither constructed a social world nor stigmatised recipients of poor relief. It is argued that accounting is better viewed as contingent, reflecting the dynamics of a complex, divisive, and highly controversial undertaking -- governmental redistribution of wealth -- during a laissez-faire era when utilitarian and individualistic principles dominated discussions of political economy. From a broad perspective, accounting can be viewed as providing rationality and transparency to a social experiment that was encumbered with moral ambiguity and embedded conflicts of interest. More specifically, accounting texts contain the documentation required by an absentee administrative cadre to monitor expenditures, justify rates on Irish property, and ensure that procedures in the statute were carried out as specified.