Nenagh Block

The Nenagh Licence Block was recently awarded to Connemara and consists of four contiguous prospecting licences covering an area of approximately 138.23 km2 of County Tipperary in south-central Ireland. The block is located approximately 1.2km north of the worked out Silvermines Mine - a Waulsortian Reef hosted deposit - 17.67 million tonnes, 6.43% zinc / 2.53% lead / 23g/t silver, with and additional 5.5 million tonnes of 84% barite at Macobar.

The block is located along the Navan-Silvermines regional basement trend, along strike to the southwest of the Knockshigownagh, Lower Palaeozoic inlier, which is controlled by a major basin margin defining fault that can be seen to influence facies distribution over a strike length of c.90km. This block is underlain by extensive and well developed Waulsortian Reef lithologies that have a maximum thickness of c.400m. Historic drilling at Shinrone has intersected intense dolomitisation with associated disseminated and semi-massive pyrite. There are a number of small, structurally controlled, basinal limestone outliers to the east of the block and possible shelf-basin facies boundary within the supra Reef lithologies to the northwest. Mapping by Noranda along the route of the Nenagh Bypass discovered extensive zones of intensely reddened basal Waulsortian Reef Iron formation to the southeast of the town of Nenagh. This mapping also discovered pyritic veining and crackle brecciation within the Waulsortian Reef succession proximal to the inferred Iron Formation.

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