Valentia Slate in Ireland has been supplying slate for the repair of floors in the Houses of Parliament since 2004. This year it has delivered three more consignments for the repair of the Valentia slate floors that Pugin installed when he rebuilt the Palace of Westminster after a fire in 1834.

The slate is also used in Ireland for counter tops, memorials, fire surrounds and hearth stones, village signs and some roofing tiles. And having gained publicity for the quarry by putting it up for sale last year, owners Michael Lyne and Patrick O'Driscoll have had a lively interest in it – they have just been approached by a company in America that wants to distribute the slate in the USA.

But Michael Lyne and Patrick O'Driscoll feel they have served their term. Michael, the younger of the two men at 65, says: "I have managed a factory for these past 40 years apart from the Quarry and I have just retired from it." His partner is 75 years old and also has his own Plant Hire business. Both Pat and Michael would like to withdraw from the quarry and pass it on to a younger generation, as there is tremendous scope for expansion and development. Michael says: "We have done what we set out to do: that is, to prove the product. We feel we have done that and now have a tremendous range of very high quality products.

"We opened up the mine with the intention of seeing what was there and selling it on, but we never really did that. We just drifted on. Our turnover is not high but the potential is significant."

The slate from the island of Valentia off the coast of the Ring of Kerry in the south-west of Ireland has a long and distinguished provenance.

The island contains a mountain of bluish-grey slate with a hint of purple. The quarry operators have the mineral rights to 130 acres of it with no royalties to pay to the state because they own it. About a quarter of an acre of slate has been extracted since the portal into the mountain was opened in 1816 by the Knight of Kerry, who was the landlord of the island at that time.

"It will be a thousand years before you come out of the other side of the mountain," says Michael Lyne.

There were 450 people involved in winning and working the slate back in the early years of the 19^th century. Today there are six with some hefty machines.

The mine closed in 1911 when a rockfall at the mouth partially blocked it. Michael Lyne and Patrick O'Driscall opened it up again in 1998 with a new portal 20m from the old workings, although the old workings (essentially a cave 20m high by 20m wide and 200m deep) have been used as a factory to house the machinery for processing the extracted slate.

The current entrance to the mine goes into the mountain horizontally, which provides easy access, while Portmagee road bridge, built in 1971, and a summer ferry mean the slate can be driven off the island.

Valentia Slate Ltd has invested in the mine and today operates a Fantini chain saw, a Hymac tracked excavator, a rock breaker and two forklift trucks to extract the stone, and for processing it a Pelligrini diamond wire saw, 1200mm and 600mm GMM and Gilbert secondary saws, some stone polishers and a Kolb Genius for making counter tops, as well as the usual power tools. It also has sandblasting equipment for making memorials, which is an important part of the business.

The slate has a well-deserved reputation as durable and attractive walling, roofing, paving and flooring, as well as worktops, memorials and furniture.

It was famously used as flooring and paving, both honed and riven, and as counter tops, steps and skirting, as well as for the construction of an amphitheatre, at the EU Food & Veterinary Headquarters at Grange in Co Meath, built in 2003. Other major projects have included the Irish Veterinary Laboratory Headquarters at Drumshambo, Co Leitrim, the National State Laboratory at Blackweston, Co Dublin, and The Marine Institute in Galway, as well as many top-notch hotels in Ireland.

In 2014, Valentia slate gave Tracy Coyne from Killarney her winning display on The Great Irish Bake Off. The display was crafted by Declan Mulvany and Micheal Lyne.

The company has also supplied slate for Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral and several London Underground stations, including Waterloo, Charing Cross, Liverpool Street and Blackfriars, while the on-going supply of slate for the Palace of Westminster is worth about €50,000 a year.

But Michael Lyne says the time has come for the business to pass on to new owners and has put it on the market at an asking price of €1.25million, although he says "we're flexible enough on that".

There was some interest when the mine was put on the market last year but no sale was ever concluded. Now Michael is trying again in the belief that the business might have an interest to a UK company that wants a foot in the Eurozone or someone in the Eurozone who wants potentially easier access to the UK.

If you are interested, contact Paul Stephenson at Sherry Fitzgerald Stephenson Crean on 00353 (0) 66 7180822 / Mob: 00353 (0)86 6889300 / [email protected]