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It was anticipated that the arrival of the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1992 would put a new ecological imprint upon Ireland's beleaguered system of environmental regulation. While the formation of the agency can be clearly traced to an upsurge in environmental protest in the 1980s, this article argues that our understanding of its origins is enhanced by an examination of the (historical) interaction between the Irish and UK regulatory systems. In adopting an extended time-frame the article focuses on an area of policy learning that heretofore has received little attention but which has proven formative in the evolution of Irish environmental policy: institutional memory. As such, two (inter-related) arguments emerge. First, that much of Ireland's ‘new’ regulatory framework (heavily influenced by the United Kingdom) displays rather more in the way of continuity than change. Secondly, that this tends to cast a shadow over one of the central (albeit very often implicit) themes of ecological modernisation: that policy development follows a linear form, one based upon a rejection of the principles of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]