Mining Company of Ireland

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mining Company of Ireland (MCI) was a mining company formed in 1824 after Parliament passed the Mining Company of Ireland Act 1824. The act let the company sue or be sued in the name of its secretary or a member. After a meeting of Dublin philanthropists on 5 February 1824, MCI started by offering 4,000 shares of £25 each, with a limit of 25 shares per person. The company bought Luganure Mine in County Wicklow and ran it for 66 years, producing about 50,000 tonnes of lead and 25,000 ounces of silver. In the 1850s it explored a copper mine at Ballydehob, County Cork. It leased an iron ore mine at Glen of Imaal in 1859, but that venture failed. From 1826, MCI mined lead at Ballycorus in County Dublin. In Mardyke, Killenaule, County Tipperary, it leased land for 21 years to mine coal, and a village grew around the mine. The company sometimes operated at a loss, including at Mardyke during the Great Famine. The Irish mining industry grew until the 1860s, but then fell as mineral prices dropped after the American Civil War.