Conroy Diamonds and Gold this morning said that testing of its Clay Lake gold target in Co. Armagh had returned positive results.

The drilling programme follows previous positive gold results which demonstrated the presence of a broad zone of gold mineralisation. The step out drilling is ongoing and further holes are planned.

The Clay Lake anomaly covers an area of about 141 hectares and has returned the highest gold-in-soil values ever recorded by the Conroy on its Irish exploration licences. It is larger than that at Clontibret (125ha), 7km to the south-west, where the company has established a JORC-compliant gold resource of over 1 million ounces on only 20pc of the target.

Commenting on the results, the company's chairman, Professor Richard Conroy said: "These are excellent results from Clay Lake. They show we are starting to see continuity of the stockwork, which will help to build a resource in this area which we believe to be even more prospective than Clontibret. Also, having a drill hole with nearly one third of it in mineralisation is extremely encouraging."