The past few years have seen an upsurge in the numbers of known Neolithic settlements in Ireland. Many of these sites have been excavated by archaeologists based in field units, but few are well-known to the wider archaeological community. This papers in this volume were presented at a conference held at Queen's University, Belfast in 2001, which provided a forum for a discussion of the new Neolithic material from Ireland in its wider geographical context. Although the bulk of the emerging Irish settlement evidence relates to substantial houses, many of these papers consider wider themes, including issues of contact and communication along the sea routes and coastal margins of north-west Europe, questions of diversity and regional patterns of sedentism and mobility, and variations in regional food production strategies.