Exploration Company Reports

This page is no longer being maintained. The last update was on 01/05/2009.
Data release is now available with live updates from: Exploration reports search and EMD Document Search - Direct link.

Competition Data is now listed under: Prospecting Licence Competitions under exploration licensing process

Since late 2002, the Exploration and Mining Division has been progressively making its repository of non-confidential exploration reports available through these web pages, free of charge. Two categories of exploration report are available from EMD:

• Reports that relate to PL Areas surrendered since 1st January 2000
• Reports which relate to currently held PL Areas but which are over six years old (included in this category are numerous reports relating to areas that have been held continuously since the 1960s)

'Historic' reports (e.g. those relating to ground surrendered prior to 1st January 2000) are not currently available from EMD. Customers wishing to view these reports should contact Gerry Stanley, Minerals Section, Geological Survey of Ireland.


Accessing Exploration Company Reports

All exploration reports submitted to EMD by exploration companies have been published online as PDF documents. (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view these documents; click here to download the viewer). In order to view reports, users must first select a PL Area of interest from the lists below. For convenience sake, PL Areas have been grouped into the following classes of ground: 1. PL Areas available under competition, 2. Areas available for application at any time, 3. Previous competition areas (now closed) & offered areas (unavailable), 4. Currently held areas. After clicking on a PL Area, a new web page is returned which lists all the company reports available for the area. To view or download a particular report, simply click on the item of interest.
New Additions: Areas with data released since 1st April 2005 are starred (*).

• PL Areas available under competition application

• Areas available any time

• Previous competition areas now closed and offered areas (unavailable)

Data available for these areas can be from a previous licence holder, from the current licence holder, or both. Data from current licence holders is over six years old (see above) unless they are seeking a joint venture partner, in which case recent reviews are available online. Areas with such reviews, termed "Moratorium Reports", are shown in bold. For more information about these Reports click here.

This data (along with borehole and airborne geophysical data) can also be accessed through the Exploration Theme of the Interactive Maps page, which provides a gazetteer function to locate the required PL area.

We recommend that clients using a 56K modem connection do not attempt to download files that exceed several Mb in size. These clients can alternatively order the company exploration reports on CD-ROM (free of charge) by contacting EMD.