Derryvree is compelling because its freshwater silts preserve a local ice-free refuge within a period often represented through broad, island-wide glacial maps. The article’s contrast between this precise landscape evidence and the long, mixed chronology of Castlepook Cave usefully cautions against reconstructing a single simultaneous ecosystem. It also raises the possibility that brief human visits may remain archaeologically elusive, even where animal remains survive. How should researchers weigh local environmental archives, cave faunas and uncertain cut-mark evidence when assessing whether Ireland itself offered intermittent habitats and routes for Upper Palaeolithic people during the dynamic expansion of the British–Irish Ice Sheet?