Derryvree’s buried wetland reveals how glaciation could both destroy landscapes and preserve traces of ecological resilience. Its pools, sedges, mosses and insects indicate a local ice-free interval, whereas Castlepook’s mixed deposits make animal communities and possible human activity difficult to align chronologically. Together, these archives suggest that Late Pleistocene Ireland was periodically habitable without demonstrating enduring occupation. They also challenge simplistic images of a uniformly frozen, empty island. How might further dating, sediment analysis and carefully contextualised cave evidence help distinguish brief visits, changing migration routes and repeated human use of Ireland’s shifting wetland and coastal environments during MIS 3?