Conroy points to exciting gold and zinc prospects in Ireland

Irish explorer, Conroy, is exploring what it reckons is a commercially viable plus one million ounce gold discovery in Ireland and has also found a potentially larger gold deposit and an interesting zinc anomaly all close by.

LONDON - 

Take a one million ounce plus gold discovery in say a politically risky African nation and the exploration company concerned's stock is almost sure to be positively affected and the achievement is shouted from the rooftops.  Take a similarly sized resource discovery in a relatively politically-stable jurisdiction like Ireland and the market seems to pay little attention.  This is one of the many anomalies which beset the markets and probably makes Conroy Diamonds & Gold chairman, Professor Richard Conroy wonder what he has to do to attract serious market interest.

As my colleague Barry Sergeant noted on Mineweb recently an average figure of $58 an ounce can be put on the value of gold in the ground across a wide group of companies.  Conroy Diamonds & Gold's figure for its Clontibret resource in Ireland is only around $9 per ounce, yet the potential exists for a considerable extension to this as the find is only on 20% of the company's ground in the area - a gold belt which straddles the Irish and Northern Irish border..

And its not that the Conroy team has no track record.  Richard Conroy formed Conroy Diamonds and Gold in 1995, not long after he left active involvement with ARCON International Resources. He created Conroy Petroleum and Natural Resources in 1980 and the company renamed itself ARCON, as the result of its takeover of Atlantic Resources in 1992.

Other members of the Conroy executive team, Maureen Jones and James Jones, assisted Professor Conroy with the creation of Conroy Petroleum and Natural Resources. The three had a successful record of exploration at Galmoy in Ireland, which led to the discovery of economic metal deposits. The company also enjoyed success as part of the Stone Boy consortium, which discovered the Pogo gold deposit in central Alaska subsequently developed by Teck Cominco Ltd.

By the mid-1990s, ARCON was well on its way to developing the Galmoy base metal mine in Ireland, and Professor Conroy decided to search for Irish gold. The shares of Conroy Diamonds and Gold began trading on the OFEX in 1997 and the company graduated to the AIM in 2000. Although mining exploration in Ireland originally centred on gold, the discovery of Galmoy and other base metal deposits shifted focus to zinc and lead. Nevertheless, Professor Conroy believed Ireland offered a worthwhile opportunity for gold exploration, especially in the area of the Longford-Down Massif.

During the second half of the 1990s, Conroy Diamonds and Gold began exploration along the Massif, finding enough to justify the acquisition of the entire area of interest. The company's dominant land position, covering about 1,500 square kilometres of the Longford-Down Massif is a clear plus, but the lack of any rivals in the area makes the area less newsworthy to investors.

The company's exploration of the Longford-Down Massif has led to the discovery of the gold trend which it is currently exploring in more detail, potentially stretching 115 kilometres across a region straddling the border of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and where it has so far delineated its million ounce JORC compliant gold resource. The identified gold zone stretches from Co. Cavan at the southwestern end to Co. Armagh in the northeast.

In commenting on the company's annual results for the year ended May 31^st, out today, Professor Conroy said "The gold resource currently delineated at the Clontibret target now stands at over one million ounces and our initial studies show that this is economically viable and has the potential to be expanded. We have also discovered a potentially larger gold deposit at Clay Lake and an extensive zinc anomaly south of this which are both very exciting. 

"Post period we have raised €560,000 and this will allow us to develop these potentially very exciting opportunities. The potential is clear, the possibilities exciting.  I look forward to the future with confidence."

Conroy's stock on AIM stands at 3.75p at the time of writing.

Disclaimer

MINEWEB is an interactive publication, with rolling deadlines through each day, commencing in the Sydney morning,  and concluding, 24 hours later,  in the Vancouver evening.  If you believe your side of an issue deserves inclusion, but has failed to meet one of our deadlines, you are invited to notify the Editor in Chief in Johannesburg, and we will include you in our editing and expanding on our stories. Email him at alechogg@gmail.com

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