This article traces the functioning of the Commissioners of National Education, outlining salient aspects of their activities in the national school system during Ireland's Great Famine of the 1840s. The role of the commissioners as an agency of government is explored in the context of their annual reports and their general response to the calamitous circumstances of the period. The first-hand reportage of the commissioners' inspectors of schools is surveyed and the circumstances of the Poor Law Union or workhouse schools are examined. Despite the fact that the commissioners had ready access to the personal experiences and stark reports of their own corps of inspectors, the defining character of the reaction of the commissioners to an appalling calamity was one of bureaucratic indifference and official insouciance. The overall response of the commissioners to the cataclysmic events of the time mirrors the response of other agencies of government of the period.