Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and wild fauna and flora marked a significant departure in European Community nature conservation law. There was considerable delay both in the transposition of the Habitats Directive into national law and in the submission of sites to the Commission for adoption as SCIs. Ireland only transposed the Directive in 1997 through SI 94/1997 European Communities (Natural Habitats) Regulations 1997. The legal jigsaw of what the Habitats Directive requires is slowly being put together. One new piece of that jigsaw is the European Communities (Natural Habitats) (Amendment) Regulations 2005, signed into law in July 2005. This legislation tidies up a number of anomalies in the Habitats Regulations and introduces a number of significant provisions, largely in an apparent effort to make Irish law consistent with the requirements of the Habitats Directive. The purpose of this note is to analyse the changes made by the Habitats Amendment Regulations and to assess whether full transposition of the Directive has now been completed.