I gave notice this morning of my intention to raise on the Adjournment the unprovoked and forcible boarding of Irish vessels by British naval parties during the past week. When one observes the unprovoked, unauthorised, offensive, and forcible boarding of Irish vessels by the British one wonders will the British never learn. In the past week two vessels, the Sheanne and the Owenro, have been boarded by British naval parties from the British minesweeper Killington and we learned from the newspapers today that the British have admitted boarding a third Irish vessel, the Craigavad.
It is necessary that we, in our national Parliament, should assert before the world the right of any vessel flying the Irish flag to sail the seven seas, particularly our own ones, peacefully and without hindrance. We had every reason to hope in recent years that relations between Ireland and Britain had reached an adult level in which if either country had a cause for complaint against the other it could be dealt with through diplomatic channels.
Therefore, it is a cause of very serious concern and deep hurt to us that British naval forces should, apparently without previous intimation to the Irish Government, infringe our sovereignty by boarding vessels flying the Irish flag, sailing peacefully in our waters. The conduct of the British Navy is in conflict with the law of the sea, with international law and with Britain's own agreements with this country.
Because it is the British action, the British efforts at gun diplomacy, which has provoked this debate, I think it is very important that we should pause for a moment to consider the actual situation concerning the territorial waters surrounding this island. By the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, Britain presumed to legislate for this country and by that Act the area now known as Northern Ireland was specifically limited to the "Parliamentary counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone." The waters surrounding that area are not included, only parliamentary land is included in Northern Ireland. The Act is quite specific in confining the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland Government to land.
Therefore, it is highly questionable whether Britain has any rights whatsoever within what might otherwise be described as the territorial waters surrounding the six north eastern counties. If Britain proceeds in the provocative way in which she has behaved in the past six days, it seems to be incumbent on us to question before the International Court in the Hague or elsewhere whether Britain has any right, even under her own legislation, in the waters surrounding Northern Ireland.
The 1921 Treaty between Britain and Ireland again stated that the State with which Britain was then entering into a treaty was the country of Ireland, and while the Treaty did give to that portion of Northern Ireland contained in the 1920 Act an opportunity to opt out of coming under the jurisdiction of the Dublin Government, no power was given to Northern Ireland over the waters surrounding Northern Ireland. Such provision in the Treaty as there was for coastal defence was for the whole island. That arrangement was to be reviewed five years later. The provisions relating to coastal defence by Britain became meaningless and ineffective and were declared formally by the 1938 agreement between Ireland and Britain to be no longer effective. Thus did Britain waive all claim to any authority in Irish coastal waters.
So Britain has herself acknowledged that her writ does not run to the waters surrounding Northern Ireland. I do not wish to raise old disputes but, if the waters around Ireland are not to be sailed peacfully and if the ships flying the tricolour are not to be permitted to sail peacefully and without hindrance or offence, it will be incumbent on us to assert before the world our sovereign rights over those waters so that no act of a warlike kind is waged against us by anybody else.
It is ironic though that those unwarranted and illegal acts by Britain should have been committed by a nation which is regarded as having enunciated modern thinking on rights to freedom of the open sea, because it was in 1580, when the Spanish authorities challenged the right of Sir Francis Drake to sail across the Pacific, that Queen Elizabeth I said:
That vessels of all nations could navigate on the Pacific, since the use of the sea and the air is common to all, and that no title to the ocean can belong to any nation, since neither nature nor regard for the public use permits any possession of the ocean.
This, of course, has been qualified during the years in relation to maritime waters, at times called territorial waters but it must be emphasised and clearly understood that the right to one's territorial waters does not give one the right to deny to others freedom to pass inoffensively through those territorial or maritime waters. I will read something from Oppenheim's International Law Volume I, Peace, page 542:
The freedom of the open sea involves freedom of inoffensive passage through the maritime belt for merchantmen of all nations and also for men-of-war of all nations in so far as the part of the maritime belt concerned forms a part of the highways for international traffic.
He gives examples of the branches of the ocean applicable and mentions the North Sea, the English Channel, the Irish Sea and the Baltic and others with which we are not concerned at present.
It is established in international law that vessels sail under the sway of the flag State, that is they are covered by the country whose flag they display. The vessels which have been so rudely and unprovocatively boarded by British naval parties were displaying the flag of Ireland. They were entitled to have their Irish statehood respected. As such they should have been immune to the infringements which took place.
I want to quote again from Oppenheim's International Law, page 542:
The freedom of the open sea involves likewise freedom of inoffensive passage through the maritime belt for merchantmen of all nations, and also for men-of-war of all nations, in so far as the part of the maritime belt concerned forms a part of the highways for international traffic.
It must be universally accepted that the waters surrounding Ireland are part of the highways for international traffic. This is particularly so in the case of the waters approaching Carlingford Lough and the waters in the Northern Channel between Ireland and Scotland.
The action of the British naval parties is tantamount to the action of a country at war taking steps to enforce a blockade, and it is clearly established in international law that a blockade can only be justified in time of war. Again I quote from Oppenheim's International Law, page 553.
In time of war belligerents can blockade not only enemy ports and territorial coast waters, but also parts of the open sea adjoining those ports and waters, and neutral merchantmen attempting to break such a blockade can be confiscated. And, further, in time of war belligerent men-of-war can visit, search, and eventually seize neutral merchantmen for carriage of contraband, and the like.
These are the only instances in which international law permits armed naval vessels to stop, board and search vessels belonging to other countries on the open sea.
Has it come to this, that the British Government, without prior consultation, proceed to act in a manner which international law recognises as legitimate only if a state of war exists between ourselves and Britain? I do not think it has come to that, but that is the construction which can be put upon the conduct of the British naval parties. One can only hope that this was a foolish act and that it was done without proper attention to legalities or consideration of its consequences. One feels an obligation to urge the British Government that they should ensure that all British naval forces desist forthwith from any illegitimate, offensive and provocative acts of the kind which we have witnessed over the past few days.
The hostile boarding of a vessel at sea is an act of piracy. The fact that that was done by the warship of any nation does not in any way qualify the act of piracy which was committed. The boarding of a ship by a naval party may be legitimate if it is an authorised act but, since international law could not at all justify or legalise what has occurred this week, the action of the British naval parties must be considered as acts of piracy, because they were acts of violence and acts of interference with inoffensive vessels which were pursuing courses of peace.
There is no need for the Dáil to assert again what they have overwhelmingly asserted, that is, their conviction that arms must not be used by Irishmen to settle their differences. There is no need for us to use arms. In fact, there is a compelling need that we should not use arms. That being so, one would expect that the British Government would accept the bona fides of our declaration, notwithstanding any temporary and passing difficulty which may have arisen this year, and that if they had reason to believe that arms are being imported or conveyed across the Irish Sea bound for our ports they should notify our Government so that steps could be taken to ensure that those arms were not put to any unlawful use or illegally imported. That would have been the appropriate course to take, a course which would not have led to the kind of provocation and misunderstanding inevitably caused by the acts which have occurred over the past few days.
Goodness knows, it is difficult enough to keep all our people on the path of peace. Provocative and inflammatory acts of any kind, whether they arise through indiscretion or illwill, can only make the way to peace more difficult. Therefore we earnestly hope that there will be a very effective protest from our Government to the British authorities to ensure that there will be no further incidents of this kind. It is a matter of considerable regret to us in this House that, the first incident having occurred four days ago and a dé-marche having been made by our Minister for External Affairs to the British Government, there should have been at least one if not two further incidents since then before even a reply had been received to our initial protest.
One must also regret on this occasion that the Government should have allowed our own naval strength to drop to the point where we are not in a position to take the necessary naval action to provide protection for our merchant and fishing vessels. The Government must be criticised for their failure to maintain our naval strength, One would hope that this crisis may only be a passing one and that at least some good will come out of it and the Government will mend their ways and bring our naval strength up to an adequate level as quickly as possible.
With this, Sir, I conclude. Let us hope that the British Government will realise their folly and regret the offence they have caused—a deep but I would hope not a lasting offence—and that they will undertake that there will be no repetition of these illegal, unauthorised and highly offensive actions.
