Catholic emancipation lifted the prohibition on Catholics becoming KCs (senior court room lawyers), MPs, and holding certain offices in the government such a senior military commissions.

But what I see as 'the real problems of Ireland' was that the majority of the population lived in dire poverty on small allotments in the countryside, suffering chronic under-employment and receiving little or no cash income in return for their labour, a position which led to excessive dependence on a single crop with a high incidence of violence and shortages of food (even before the famine). This was regardless of whether their landlord was a Protestant who opposed Catholic Emancipation; a Protestant who supported Catholic Emancipation; or a Catholic, like Lord Fingall. Some landlords tried hard (if not always very effectively) to improve the lot of their tenants, but many did not, seldom visited their estates, and spent as much as they could of the rents they received from their Irish estates in England.

The Whigs and Grenvillites campaigned for Catholic Emancipation because it was a subject which united them (unlike Parliamentary reform), and because it did very little to threaten their financial interests.