The Irish standard., 1919-10-18
UndeveIoped Water Power Enormous
Under Its Own Government Ire
land Could Easily Support
100000 People.

By Eamonn De Valera, President of
the Irish Republic.
England has caused the finest for
ests in the world to be destroyed,
making no provision for replacing
them. The Irish oak had a world
wide reputation-especially for ship
building. 1t is gone. In the recent
war England completed the destruc-
tion OF the Irish woods.
Today Ireland, once the wooded
ISLE" is, with the single exception of
Iceland; the most treeless country in
Europe. But this could easily be
remedied by an Irish government
and the government of the republic is
proceeding to remedy it.
The English say Ireland cannot he
a manufacturing nation because she
has no coal. l have shown that she
has coal-coal in abundance; and
even though she had not, she had
peat. thousands of millions of tons of
it.
But even that Ireland possessed
neither coal nor peat, she might still
be very we'll manufacturing nation,
for, like Switzerland, she has white
coar' in an amount greater than most
European countries available in her
rivers, through neglect of
which. as Lord Northcliffe pointed out
a year or two ago, millions of horse
power are lost to Ireland every year."
Sir Robert Kane estimated that taking
a working year of 800 working days of
IL hours each, the loss is over 3,OOO,-
900 horsepower.
The Shannon alone, in a space of
Is miles where the fall is 72 feet, be-
tween Killaloe and Limerick, gives
39,950 horsepower in continuous ac-
tion day and night throughout the en-
tire year. The other great rivers, too,
for example, the Lee, the Liffey. the
Boyne, every one of them could give
ample water power to make manufac-
turing industries in their neighbor-
hood commercially profitable. The
turbine engine and the modern meth
ods of electrical distribution put that
beyond question.
Various Other Materials.
Not only have we coal and peat in
Ireland, but we have also Ignite; not
only iron, but copper, lead, silver and
other metals.
Lignite:-Lignite, apart from it's
value as a fuel, might prove of great
economic Importance as a source of
valuable extracts and distillates.
In the Lough Neagh district there
is bed of Ignite occupying an area
of 1S0 miles square, and proved in
different localities to be 20 feet thick.
In the interbasaltic zone of the An
trim plateau it is also found, and near
Port Rush is 13 feet thick. There, a
bed, more or less irregular, swells out
to considerable dimensions.
: Copper:-Copper mines form three
great groups all on the seaside-in
County Wicklow, Waterford and the
southeastern angle of Cork and Ker-
ry. In 1S45 the output, according to
Kane, was $4,000 tons per annum.
Silver Lead:-Lead is even more
extensively dihused throughout Ire.
land than copper. In certain locali-
ties large quantity of silver was
obtained from working the lead ore.
These amounts range from 12O ounces
to the ton in Kilbracken, Glare, to
three ounces in Luganure, Wicklow.
In the carboniferous limestone of the
silver mine district in Tipperary
there is an extensive mineralized bed
of silver lead, zinc blende and Gala
mine (hemimorphite). Until recently
this deposit had been worked at in.
tervals for hundreds Of years.
Alum:-Deposits of alum, quite pure,
are being found in the cliffs of the
West Coast, as we'll as various other
aluminium salts.
6auxite in Several Places.
It is worth noting that bauxite
used for the production of the metal
aluminium and for the manufacture
of sulphite of alumina, required for
bleaching purposes in the manufac-
ture of paper, etc., is found in sew
eral places in the northeast of the
island. So is haematite iron ore,
which occurs in large quantities, and
is easily mined. On account of the
high percentage of titanic oxide it
was formerly disliked by the smelters.
Modern processes have now overcome
this difficulty.
Diatomite (kieselguhr) occurs in
large quantities in the Bann Valley.
It is used for variety of purposes
for manufacture of pottery, for re-
fractory bricks, for fireproof material