A well is a hole dug into the ground usually for the purpose of taking water from the ground but also for monitoring groundwater. Most private wells are used for home and farm water supplies are in rural areas. Springs occur where groundwater comes out at the surface. A borehole is a hole drilled into the ground to gain access to groundwater. The hole is usually deep, narrow and round.

This map shows the location of the dug wells, springs and boreholes in Ireland. Data was collected by GSI drilling or submitted to the GSI from Local Authorities and other state bodies, Private Well Grants, Drillers, Consultants, Group Water Schemes and Academia. The location accuracy is visually portrayed on the GSI webmapping viewer by the size of the circle displaying the record. It is NOT a comprehensive database and many wells and springs are not included in this database. You should not rely only on this database, and should undertake your own site study for wells in the area of interest if needed.

This map is to the scale 1:100,000. This means it should be viewed at that scale. When printed at that scale 1cm on the map relates to a distance of 1km.

It is a vector dataset. Vector data portray the world using points, lines, and polygons (areas).

The data is shown as polygons. Each polygon holds information on the location of the borehole (X and Y coordinates), Well ID (well identifier), hole details, location details, yield, abstraction ,drilling details.