Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 31 January 2013
51. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the process behind the adoption of the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea’s 200 mile economic exclusive zone into Irish law; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4845/13]
View answerUnder Part V of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea all coastal states are entitled to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The EEZ is that body of water lying beyond the outer limit of a state’s 12 mile territorial sea which may extend to a maximum distance of 200 miles from shore, subject only to the same rights of its neighbours. The EEZ represents a compromise reached in the long negotiations on the 1982 Convention between those states that wished to extend their territorial seas out to 200 miles and those that wished to maintain the freedoms of the high seas that then applied in these waters. Although no state is obliged to claim an EEZ, agreement on the EEZ regime allowed coastal states to extend their 12 mile exclusive fisheries zones out to 200 miles. Within the EEZ they also have rights and duties in relation to the protection of the marine environment, production of energy from water and wind, and the conduct of marine scientific research should they seek to exercise them. The recovery of oil and gas from the seabed, however, is governed by the separate legal regime of the continental shelf.
Following international agreement on EEZ rules during the law of the sea negotiations in the 1970s, initially Ireland decided to exercise its rights and duties in respect of fisheries only and so declared a 200 mile Exclusive Fisheries Zone in 1977. Responsibility for protection of the marine environment was extended to 200 miles in 1999 and a full EEZ was established by section 87 of the Sea Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006. The United Kingdom enacted legislation in 2009 enabling the creation of a British EEZ and the two sides are currently in discussions to settle the boundaries between the British and Irish EEZs.
