A very big pot of Irish gold
An exploration company has discovered a huge gold mine in Ireland which could be the biggest ever found in the British Isles. Joe Zefran reports the mine will create 600 new jobs and take three to four years to open.
A gold nugget (Fati Moalusi/AFP/Getty Images)
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Scott Jagow: Now, it's time to hear from our friendly morning report leprechaun:
Leprechaun: Have you seen a craic of gold lying around?
Leprechaun tells me that in Ireland, an exploration company has discovered a huge gold mine. It could be the biggest ever found in the British Isles. Joe Zefran has more from Dublin.
Joe Zefran: It's been raining a lot this month here in Ireland, and that means lots of rainbows. The company Conroy Diamonds & Gold followed one, and found its lucky pot this week: a mine with 1 million ounces of gold. It's not the best quality, but at today's prices, it's worth almost $950 million.
Conroy's senior geologist Kevin McNulty says they've just scratched the surface:
Kevin McNulty: The significance is that we're still only looking at 20 percent of one of our targets, and we have several targets of a similar size to that. So there is a huge potential in that area for a lot more resources to be discovered yet today.
As Ireland braces for its own recession, the announcement is welcome news. After all, in bad economic times, gold is always a good thing to have.
The company says the mine will create 600 new jobs and take three to four years to open. Now, they'll just have to get past this guy:
Leprechaun: No one takes the leprechaun's gold.
In Dublin, I'm Joe Zefran for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Dumfries, SK, 07/06/2008
This is the start of many bonanza,s that are just going to start. Have been hearing privately about many many rich finds being discovered. News and reports are on my forum of finds in Britain and Ireland in the World Gold Panning Forum.
http://s10.invisionfree.com/World_Goldpanning/index.php
From WY, 07/02/2008
Please! One does not "discover" a gold mine. One discovers a deposit, then the mine is constructed to deal with the resource deposit. Or, are you trying to convince us that the leprechauns have already constructed the mine?
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