Professor Richard Conroy, whose gold mining company Conroy Gold and Natural Resources was established in 1995 to search for deposits in Northern Ireland and Finland, has died, aged 91.
Prof Conroy was born in Birmingham, England and moved to Ireland with his family at the age of five. He later attended the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, where he would eventually become chair of its physiology department.
Conroy Gold deputy chairman John Sherman paid tribute to Prof Conroy’s contributions to medicine, Irish politics and mineral exploration throughout his life.
“He was an entrepreneur to the very end, building a vision that Ireland would become a world leader in exploration and mining,” he said in a statement.
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“Following on from leading the development of a big zinc mine in Galmoy, his vision, founded in knowledge of gold evidenced in an antimony mine in Clontibret, was that Ireland was an emerging gold province with significant potential for economic scale ore bodies.”
Prof Conroy was twice elected to the Seanad by Fianna Fáil.
Conroy Gold discovered deposits in Clay Lake and Cargalisgorran in Co Armagh in 2016, announcing that “gold-in-bedrock has already been demonstrated at either end of this enlarged gold target”.
In 2017, minority shareholder Patrick O’Sullivan lost his bid for a High Court declaration he brought against Conroy Gold and Natural Resources that he and two of his nominees had wrongly been blocked by Prof Conroy from being elected directors of the board.
The company stopped trading on the Irish Stock Exchange on November 6th, 2017 but still has a presence on the London Stock Exchange.
Professor Conroy, who had links to both Newmarket on Fergus and Ballsbridge, Dublin, died on October 14th following a brief illness. He was predeceased by Dr Pamela and is survived by daughters Deirdre, Sorċa and extended family.
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