Vol. 562 No. 5
152 Ms Burton asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the position in relation to Rockall; the timescale for the conclusion of all matters relating to exploitation, oil and mineral rights; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6413/03]
The issue of Rockall has in the past been a source of some public legal and political controversy in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. Much of that controversy was due to unresolved fears that jurisdiction over Rockall and similar rocks and skerries was thought to be central to the mineral rights in the adjacent sea-bed and to fishing rights in the surrounding seas. However, during the course of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea the Irish delegation worked hard to establish a satisfactory legal regime applicable to islands. The United Nations convention on the Law of the Sea, which was adopted at Montego Bay at the conclusion of the Conference on 10 December 1982, provides at Article 121 paragraph 3 that: "Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf."
Article 121 (3) applies to Rockall. Ireland ratified the convention on 21 June 1996. The United Kingdom acceded to the convention on 25 July 1997. It is accordingly accepted by both states that Rockall cannot be used as a basis for delimiting their respective continental shelves or fisheries zones. While the United Kingdom continues to claim jurisdiction over Rockall, this claim is not accepted by Ireland. Each country remains aware of the position of the other.
As regards rights to oil and other minerals on the continental shelf, Article 77 of the 1982 convention provides that the coastal state exercises over its continental shelf sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting its natural resources. It exercises these rights out to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured, or further if the shelf naturally extends beyond that limit. Where the submerged prolongation of its land territory extends beyond 200 nautical miles a state is required to make a submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which has been established by the convention especially for this purpose. Such a submission should be accompanied by technical and scientific data which support the claimed limits. The limits established on the basis of the recommendations that the commission makes following its consideration of the submission shall be final and binding.
Under the terms of the convention Ireland is due to make its submission to the Commission within ten years of entry into force of the convention with respect to the State, i.e. by 21 July 2006. However a recent meeting of the states parties to the convention decided to extend this period to May 2009 for all states which had ratified or acceded to the convention before 13 May 1999, the date on which the commission adopted its scientific and technical guidelines. The scientific and technical data necessary to support Ireland's submission has been collected and work on the preparation of the submission is in hand.
