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We are proud to announce the publication of a new Mineral Exploration Borehole Database, capturing all of the boreholes documented in the Open File repository held by Geological Survey Ireland.

Boreholes provide vital information on the ground beneath our feet. The information helps us to find out the nature of the ground and can help spot any hazards as well as help explore for mineralisation. The boreholes in this database were drilled by Mineral Exploration companies between 1957 & 2002, when it was necessary for all mineral exploration companies to submit physical mine reports to the Survey after 6 years of them holding a Prospecting License or when they surrendered the license. Since then, reports have been submitted to the Minister.

The Open Files held by the Survey consists of 799 box files of reports relating to mineral exploration carried out Ireland. These include written reports, maps, geophysical data, geochemical data and boreholes logs. The reports were scanned and can be accessed using the geodata application and they are also available on Geological Survey Ireland's online digital archive for maps and documents (GOLDMINE).

This new database of boreholes allows search by location (coordinates, county, townland and PL), mineral occurrence and borehole name (past and present) as well as, where available, providing meta data regarding the length, azimuth, dip, year, whether physical core is stored with Geological Survey Ireland for the hole and a URL to the relevant GOLDMINE document. There are approximately 15,000 data points in this database relating to approximately 10,000 unique boreholes drilled between 1957 & 2002.

You can view the data via the Geology section of our Map Viewer HERE or download the dataset as a Microsoft Excel file or Shape File via the Minerals Data & Maps page HERE.