The coast of Ireland, located on the paraglacial shelf of the north-east Atlantic (Carter, 1990), is well placed to respond dynamically to external forcing factors in the marine and onshore environments. These factors include eustatic changes in relative sea-level (RSL) driven by glacial cycles on 3rd and 4th order (Milankovitch) time-scales; changes in shelf, nearshore, coastal, estuarine, dune and fluvial sediment storage and supply; changes in North Atlantic wind and wave climates; and the effects of high-magnitude events such as storms, storm surges and sea floods (Delaney and Devoy, 1995). In addition, formerly paraglacial coasts and shelves in particular are subject to a range of environmental factors impacting on present-day shelf stratigraphy and sediment dynamics. These factors include sediment supply to continental shelves, and 4th order (glacioisostatic-driven) changes in RSL (Barnhardt et al., 1997; Plag et al., 1996; Syvitski, 1991; Kelley et al., 1989). In western Britain, late Devensian (Wisconsinan; ∼ 25-13 kyr BP) ice spread outwards from dispersal centres in upland areas of Scotland, Wales, northern England, and northern and western Ireland (Bowen et al., 1986). This ice spread generally radially onto adjacent lowlands and offshore shelves in the North Atlantic, North Sea and Irish Sea (including the Northern Ireland coast) which were dry due to 4th order eustatically-driven RSL fall (Bridgland, 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]