There's gold in them thar hills. No, seriously, there is. Just west of Omagh, Co Tyrone, a stone's throw from the Sperrin Mountains, the earth glistens with precious metals, and last week the first jewellery made from certified Irish gold became available on the market.
The home of Galantas Irish Gold is a large portable office beside some farm outbuildings piled high with white plastic sacks filled with ore. Inside Irish Gold HQ, several men in suits are busy photocopying letters and licking envelopes.
To say these gold-diggers have a gleam in their eye would not be an exaggeration. "The phones have not stopped since we launched on Friday," says Kevin Martin, sales and marketing director of Galantas.
The story of Galantas Irish Gold belongs in a book of fairytales. It also represents something of a personal odyssey for Laois man Garry Phelan, production director of the company. He hands you a piece of rock. It weighs much more than you expect because of what it contains. But the shiny stuff on the outside is fool's gold, he says. It's what's inside that counts.
Seventeen years ago he was sent up to the townland of Cavanacaw, four miles outside Omagh, by his employer, a subsidiary of the multinational mining and exploration company Rio Tinto Zinc. The prospectors chose the spot because its geology was similar to that of Scandinavia and areas of the US and Canada which have gold deposits. There was, they reasoned, a good chance these fields were paved with gold. They were not the only ones interested. More than 10 companies from all over the world have licences to dig for minerals, oil and gas in the North.
"We had to get permission from the Crown Estate to scout the area. We came up with pans and wellington boots and very quickly found what we were looking for," he said.
Just as in the movies, the Rio Tinto team followed streams in the area, dipping their pans in the water and sifting through sediment for days on end. They traced the source of the gold and by 1985, the company decided the area was rich enough for them to apply for a licence to prospect, which they were awarded.
Eventually though, the company abandoned the project because the deposit didn't fit into the global scale of their mining criteria, being more suited to the activities of a junior mining company such as Galantas.
"By the time they moved out," says Mr Phelan, "they had spent more than £2 million [sterling] and we had identified 15 gold-bearing veins which consultants estimated would bear 450,000 ounces of gold."
It could have ended there had Canadian businessman and Galantas corporate director Jack Gunther not spied the potential in Cavanacaw. From mining stock, Mr Gunther set up Omagh Minerals Ltd and Mr Phelan joined the company. They applied for planning permission in 1992, anticipating a lengthy planning process because of the unprecedented nature of the application.
Environmentalists and locals - an unlikely sounding group calling themselves Omagh People Against Gold Mining - had concerns ranging from noise pollution to the fact that the habitat of local butterflies would be disturbed. There were serious worries that the refining process would result in emissions of cyanide, but as it turned out, Irish Gold decided to send the gold abroad for processing.
It wasn't until 1995 that they were given the go-ahead for their opencast mine development provided a long list of conditions were met. These included planting 450 m of trees along the roadside, the installation of groundwater wells, and the establishment of noise and air monitoring stations.
The land required by the company for its explorations had been bought a few years earlier. "We were lucky because by that time there was nobody living on the farms," says Mr Phelan. He won't say what it cost the company to acquire the 167 acres, but "we were happy and they were happy. That's all I can say."
There is at least 7 1/2 grams of gold in one tonne of ore. With 25 per cent of the company's gold likely to come from this vein, Galantas will be mining Kearney's vein for several years to come.
After an intensive period of market research, the company decided that a luxury goods company, producing the first jewellery from certified Irish gold, would be the best way to cash in on its resource. Managing director Roland Phelps, a London-based businessman with years of experience in the prestige jewellery business, envisages the product gaining an exclusivity on a par with Cartier or Tiffany. Production of silver jewellery will begin next year. "This is the only jewellery you can buy that is made from Irish gold - that is our unique selling point," he says.
At the moment the Celtic-inspired rings, earrings and bracelets can be bought only through the Internet and by mail order, but select retail outlets will stock the product in the future.
Hazel Allen Jewellery in Omagh will be the first outlet to display Galantas Irish Gold. The potential is "mind boggling" says Phelps. "The jewellery market just among the Irish diaspora is £2 billion a year."
Mr Phelan gets almost misty eyed when he thinks back on the last 17 years. "I put my heart and soul into this, it is amazing to see it all come to fruition," I never doubted it would, but still it is nice to see it actually happen," he says. Galantas jewellery can be viewed at www.galantas.com