A mining company searching for diamonds in Co Donegal is to double its total investment in the project this year as the exploration reaches a make-or-break stage.
The managing director of Cambridge Mineral Resources, Mr David Bramhill, said the company had already spent some £750,000 on initial exploration work over the past 2 1/2 years. That investment will now be doubled as the project moves into "a very telling year" and actual drilling will start.
"Obviously, we are very optimistic. Otherwise we wouldn't be spending so much of our shareholders' money. So far the results have been excellent, better than we expected," Mr Bramhill said.
He cautioned, however, that exploration of any kind was by its nature high-risk and said it would be foolhardy at this stage to talk of commercial success.
The company is also very encouraged by finds of very small rubies and sapphires, and Mr Bramhill said efforts would now concentrate on finding the source of these gemstones.
Cambridge, a Bristol-based company listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange, has been granted 10 licences by the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources to explore for diamonds and gemstones over 400 square kilometres of eastern Inishowen.
Mr Bramhill said that 60 per cent of Cambridge was owned by Irish shareholders. Since September it has opened a full-time field office in Moville.
in the past year an aerial survey was carried out over 40 square kilometres of the area, and a number of potential drilling sites were identified. A further aeromagnetic survey, which identifies different rock types, is now to be carried out over the entire area.
At the same time drilling will begin at more than 20 different locations already identified in the first survey.
Mr Jason Bak, a Canadian geophysicist at Cambridge's Moville office, said that diamond indicator minerals, unique to the diamond host rocks, had been found. This, he said, was Ireland's first discovery of titanium-rich chromite.
He said that the tiny rubies and sapphires had been found by sieving samples from streams both in the mountains and in the boggy lowlands around Inishowen.
Drilling, which is due to start in the summer at a cost of about £500,000, will concentrate on finding the host rock for these gemstones as well as diamond-bearing rocks.
To find the host rock for the rubies and sapphires would in itself be a very important discovery for Cambridge. Drilling will be to a depth of between 80 and 150 metres.
Local people, meanwhile, have been following events very closely. However, not all of them would be set to benefit from any find, as the mineral rights are not always in the hands of the landowner, but can be owned by the Government. A number of information evenings have been held in the area, attended by representatives of the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources.
Mr Bak said the company had been welcomed to Inishowen with open arms. "We have received lots of invitations from people to come and have a look at their property. They want the tests to be done on their land," he said.
Mr Bramhill also praised both the local people and the Government for being very supportive of the exploration. In the event of any find, there would then have to be "a lot of negotiations" both with landowners and the government. Local people could be assured that the process of extracting diamonds was very clean and that no chemicals were used, Mr Bramhill said.
According to Mr Bak, the company is now at the forefront of diamond exploration. "At one stage, people thought there were only diamonds in South Africa, but new areas have opened up in Canada and Australia.
"We are at the forefront because nobody has ever looked for diamonds in Ireland before and we have a chance of making a major discovery."
Mr Colin Andrew, a mining and exploration geologist who founded Navan Resources plc in 1987, joined the board of Cambridge Mineral Resources as a non-executive director in December.