Editorial IRA’s shadow over gold

The Irish Republican Army casts a long shadow — even over a possible new Irish gold mine.

A Dublin-based company, Ennex International (in which Toronto’s Northgate Exploration has a 15% direct and indirect interest) is busy trying to develop a new gold mine in the Sperrin mountains of Northern Ireland, where the IRA was spawned and is still waging a relentless guerrilla war against the British. It would, if the Ennex plan succeeds, actually be the first gold mine ever (at a conservatively-estimated production rate of about 30,000 oz a year) not only in that strife-torn area, but in the whole of Ireland.

Thanks to the IRA, however, there’s a technical (though certainly not insurmountable) hitch to the company’s development program. It has reportedly decided for instance, that it can’t use or store large quantities of explosives at the site for drilling and blasting purposes, because organizations such as the IRA are too likely to attempt to steal it for their guerrilla arsenals. Instead, the company is, for instance, using big mechanical rock-breaking drills, including a tunnelling device known as a road header.

And, even when and if the mine does get into production, expected by about early 1990, it’s planned to airlift the gold out since the only road to the mine might prove the battleground for an IRA gold heist.

So much for the peaceful, pixie notion we all had of Ireland back in the days when the only risk in being there seemed to be in straining your back trying to kiss the Blarney stone.