Donal was Robert and Catherine's last son. Donal took over his father's land. He married Judith Errigal and had three children, Sean, Roy, and Catherine. When the famine hit, Donal was unable to grow food for his family. To make matters worse the Twomey's, who were also made desperate by the famine, began to demand their rent in hard currency, instead of the barter system they had used up to that point. Finally in 1847, at the height of the famine, Donal was forced to sell his emaciated livestock to buy food. In doing so he guaranteed that he would be unable to pay his rent. When Donal and his family lost their land, they joined the ever increasing number of homeless poor in Ireland. To survive they became gleaners, poor retches that picked through harvested or deserted potato fields looking for potatoes that the farmer and the blite had missed.

In a final act of desperation, Donal decided to take his family to the work house. A work house was a privately owned company that contracted with the local government to put the poor to work in exchange for feeding and housing them. The work house was very similar to a prison, with strict rules on times of work and relations between inmates. The work house that Donal and his family went into made buttons. As soon as they arrived Donal, Sean, and Roy were separated from Judith and Catherine. From then on the only times they could see each other was on rare occasions when they met at work. The building they were housed in was infested with rats, fleas, and lice. Their food consisted of a steady diet of gruel and cheese. Once in the work house there was little hope of escaping it simply because the work house did nothing to prepare its inmates for work beyond the work house and if too many of the work house inmates were able to leave the contractor would be out of business. As a result Donal and Judith, as well as their first son Sean perished in the work house from a combination of over work and disease.