The immediate trigger for the 20 April 1879 Irishtown mass meeting is disputed. According to one commonly quoted theory, in January 1879 local Irishtown tenant farmers asked Daly to take up their cause against a landowner variously referred to as 'Canon Ulick Burke' or Bourke, or 'Canon Burke' or 'Father Burke', who had inherited a property with 22 tenants, all in arrears, had increased rents and had taken legal steps to evict them. Burke is then said to have backed down after the mass meeting and decreased rents.