In one sense, if man could get to Australia by 40,000 years ago, getting to Ireland after the Ice Age was not a significant achievement; however, the fact that an initial small population managed to survive in a different environment with a reduced range of resources was a real achievement. The chances of survival of a small population with biological and social factors also stacked against them are not great yet we can presume that this initial small group not only managed to survive but over the next two thousand years may have multiplied to several thousand and learnt to exploit all of the island's material and biological resources. At about 6,000 B.C. or earlier there is a sudden disappearance of Europe's standard microliths. Instead, a more distinctive local stone industry appears. This was based on the production of large blades, many of which were used without even trimming them into the variety of shapes so beloved of archaeologists. This can either be regarded as evidence of so-called cultural impoverishment, which is often supposed to hit island cultures, or it could be regarded as a sign of confidence in the settlers' ability to live with minimal contact with the outside world.

We can presume that by the beginning of the fourth millennium several thousand people were living in Ireland. Tasmania - a similar sized island - had a population of over 3,000 at the time of European contact.

While man had been struggling to colonise Ireland, other more long-term changes were happening in the Near East, notably the development of agriculture. At the very latest, this was brought to Ireland by 4,000 B.C. It is usually referred to as the New Stone Age or Neolithic. Of course, actual evidence of farming is hard to find and instead archaeologists usually recognise the 'Neolithic' as groupings of certain types of artefacts. These include pottery, which is not found in this part of western Europe prior to the spread of farming. Of course, pottery rarely survives intact and it is usually the stone tools which show where the settlements lay. The most obvious new stone artefact is the leaf-shaped arrowhead which was made by using pressure to remove thin slivers of flint. The end result is a pointed arrowhead, usually 3cm or less in length and under 5mm thick. Although small, these would have been fired from bows as powerful as the longbows of England - bows that could fire an arrow straight through a man. The rest of the package consisted of new types of scrapers and knives which, although less destructive, were not usually found on Mesolithic sites. The change is so abrupt that it could be argued that it was produced by the arrival of a new group of people.

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From the Appletree Press title: The People of Ireland (currently out of print).
Also see A Little History of Ireland.