The one at Breahig, in County Kerry, is a quiet example of a site type that once puzzled scholars and still prompts debate. A fulacht fia typically survives as a low, horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and shattered stone, usually dark in colour from repeated heating, sitting close to a natural water source. The mound is the accumulated debris of a trough, generally timber-lined or cut into the ground, into which stones were heated in a nearby fire and then dropped to bring the water to a boil.

Most fulachtaí fia date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some have produced earlier or later dates. For a long time the prevailing theory held that they were cooking sites, outdoor kitchens where communities boiled meat by the hot-stone method. Experiments carried out in the twentieth century showed that this worked well in practice, and a haunch of mutton could be brought to a satisfactory temperature in a surprisingly short time. More recently, researchers have proposed alternative uses, among them brewing, hide-working, and bathing, and it is possible that a single site served several of these purposes over its working life. Kerry has a high concentration of the monument type, reflecting both the county's dense prehistoric settlement and the survival of low-lying, wet ground that tends to preserve earthworks. The Breahig example sits within this broader landscape of Bronze Age activity along the southwest coast.