As mentioned in details about beginning your search, The slightly less illustrious career of convict, can still lead to a rich array of records in the library. There are letters of clemency. If the sentence was transportation then further lists give the name, age, crime and some give the ship on which the person was to be transported.

Ironically conditions for convicts on board ships for transportation to foreign lands were often better than for ordinary Irish travellers. Stricter regulations governed rations and conditions on board. See  Emigration Ships for more details on conditions.

The reasons for crime were many. Some out of greed, some out of desperation for food for a starving family. In famine times some would even commit crime deliberately, considering transportation to a foreign land preferable to what live they had back in Ireland. See The Irish Famine for more on how potato blight affect Ireland and its people.

Sentences could be harsh for even the most minor of crimes. For example, Rose Parks, from Armagh, aged only nineteen and sentenced to 7 years transportation for petty larceny.