FROM THE ARCHIVES:An anonymous reporter went west in search of a Klondyke-style scene following the discovery of a lead and zinc mine at Tynagh, Co Galway in the early 1960s, but found instead that most of the action was on distant stock exchanges. –
JOE JOYCE
A WELL-KNOWN encyclopedia describes Loughrea as “a picturesque market town of Co. Galway on the north shore of Lough Rea, 116 miles from Dublin by rail,” and to the casual visitor this seems to be a fairly accurate, if a rather utilitarian, thumbnail sketch of the town. One almost expected to find flags and bunting, Western saloons and poker games over drawn 45s, as become a boom mining town. From the surface, at least, Loughrea has not been disturbed by being near a lead and silver mine that may be worth a lot of money.
There has been no Klondyke rush yet, and no Robert Service has appeared to immortalise Tynagh and its earth delvers. Life goes on placidly around expensive daily phone calls to Toronto, a rumble from the London Stock Exchange and the first symptoms of decimal coinage in Ireland.
A map issued by the Geological Survey almost 100 years ago has the non-committal inscription “Tynagh lead mines, about 10 miles from Loughrea”.
Mines were worked at Tynagh between the faults but were abandoned many years ago. Now, with the aid of modern equipment, it seems likely that Tynagh may be the scene of the most important Irish mining venture ever dreamt of.
People were rather sceptical when prospectors seemed to stumble on the deposits, and there were questions in the London Stock Exchange and suspended dealings in the shares of the Northgate Exploration Co. of Canada, whose shares jumped from 8/6 to £1 in less than a week.
But exploratory work went on without interruption at Tynagh; prospectors and engineers said “We do not mind too much what happens in London, its [sic] Toronto that counts,” and since then Northgate shares have risen to $6.20 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. In Irish currency that is about 42s. , and Mr. Pat Hughes, chairman of Northgate Exploration, has a bet of $1,000 that they will reach £5 before St Patrick’s Day.
Mr. Hughes, a Newry man, who made a fortune prospecting for uranium in Canada, has said that the strike at Tynagh is “by far the richest of any made anywhere in the world in recent years. We have only scratched the surface, but this thing is so big that it could change the whole economy of the West of Ireland.”
How do local people feel about the situation? Mr. [Eamonn] O’Reilly, the owner of the land, is rather rueful about losing some of the farm where his family has been for 400 years. He will get compensation, but this will be rather small compared with the royalties the State will get from any ore exported from the mines. He has bought shares in the company, but was content with his lot before there was any possibility of valuable deposits being exploited.
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