Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The Government is all over the place on this issue. When the Taoiseach made his remarks about walking away, saying there was nothing more the Government could do, he gave the green light to the commando-style raid on the vessel at Pembroke. He wrote to me on 25 November stating: "Yesterday's action was clearly planned in a careful and duplicitous way and we can therefore assume it was planned long before my remarks." That is fair enough, but how does the Taoiseach propose to combat this duplicitous conduct? Will he do so by throwing in the towel? That is all that has happened so far. The Minister for Finance repeats the Taoiseach's excuse about the right of establishment in the European Union. He is blatantly misusing that right to which the Taoiseach also referred in his letter to me when he wrote: "The State cannot hinder the exercise of that right."

He is standing maritime law on its head. We are parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Article 91 of the convention states:

Every State shall fix the conditions for the grant of its nationality to ships, for the registration of ships in its territory, and for the right to fly its flag. Ships have the nationality of the State whose flag they are entitled to fly. There must exist a genuine link between the State and the ship.

Under Article 91 the Taoiseach and the Government are entitled to take action to ensure that Irish Ferries cannot reflag in Cyprus or elsewhere. They can seek to enforce that article at European level.

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