Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Cathaoirleach for allowing me to raise this important issue. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, for attending to reply to my Adjournment matter, which is to ask the Minister to outline whether he agrees that the Crown Estate has any financial or other claim on the Foyle as a sea or its riverbed.

I understand this will appear to be a controversial Adjournment topic to some. As someone who lives along the Foyle and sees an institution attempting to take moneys and possibly exert a veto over activities that have nothing to do with it, I cannot apologise for that. There has been much diplomacy for decades and tip-toeing through the thorny legalities of who owns the seas around Ireland. I refer to an article by Stephen Price in The Sunday Business Post in 2003 when there was a possibility of siting a wind farm in the Foyle. He stated, however, that the Crown Estate, which owns the sea bed 12 miles out around Britain, advertised the lease of the Tunes Plateau for Stg £200,000 in 2002. Even so, neither Government seems entirely sure where the offshore border lies and, as somebody in Donegal said, if it was oil they discovered there, one could bet this issue would be settled in the morning. The Sunday Business Post article effectively said that the Crown Estate owns 12 miles out around Britain. I challenge under what guise the Crown Estate has any function in the Foyle.

In its response to the Foyle and Carlingford fisheries order of 2007, the Crown Estate indicated that it had significant ownership interests in the foreshore and seabed of Northern Ireland and has broad experience and knowledge of activities around the tidal and inter-tidal zones. It went on to put forward ideas for amendments to the Foyle fisheries order and to retain a level of control for the Crown Estate. I again ask why and under what guise it did that?

Under the Government of Ireland Act I believe that the island of Ireland and its seas were returned and subsequently the Six Counties removed, that is, the counties, not the waters. I could submit to the Minister of State many views on the story prior to the 1920s and post that period. I refer to the Saorstát Éireann Department of Fisheries, section 27 of the Fisheries Act 1925 (No. 32 of 1925), in which Fionan O Loingsigh, the then Minister for Fisheries, defined the new Moville Fishery District Order 1926 Tidal Electoral Division as "The whole of the sea appurtenant to Saorstát Éireann along the coast in Lough Foyle and between Lough Foyle and Malin Head (Co. Donegal) and around any islands or rocks situate off the same (including Inishtrahull) with the whole of the Tideway along said Coast and Islands and the Tidal portions lying within Saorstát Éireann of the several Rivers and Tributaries flowing into Lough Foyle and into the sea between Lough Foyle and Malin Head (Co. Donegal)." I can submit the boundary map I have for the record but I will not have time in five minutes to read all the arguments into the record, both before and after that 1926 order and definition.

Now, under the Foyle fisheries most recent Bill that enabled the licensing of aquaculture, I am again led to believe that our representatives on the Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission are in negotiations with the Crown Estate to agree a lease. I ask the straight, one-word question, why? What reason, under what regulation, under what legislation do we have to engage in financially rewarding this body? Under what power does the Crown Estate claim a proportion of the turnover of the Foyle ferry service? What form does our new devolved administration in Stormont and our joint administrations, the Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission, have if, when we offer licences or promote projects, or object to projects such as the wind farm proposal to which I referred, there is still some onus to turn to the Crown Estate for, in effect, its veto?

This is not a wrapping a flag around me exercise. It has fundamental serious implications that must be addressed. In Wales the Crown Estate is exercising a right to veto applications for aquaculture licensing. It may be only some time before this becomes a reality in our region and, therefore, the basic tenet of my Adjournment matter remains under what authority is this right being projected?

In 1997 I asked the then Minister, Deputy Barrett, whether there was a change of areas within the Foyle area controlled by the Foyle Fisheries Commission in the mid-1970s and whether the consent of the Foyle Fisheries Commission was given to any redefinition of the Foyle area as controlled by the commission. He answered at that time that the statutory definition of the Foyle area has not altered from that laid down in the Foyle Fisheries Act 1952, where it is defined as meaning the Londonderry District originally created by order in 1855. Therefore, the Irish Government neither had instructed change nor took part in change, but the statutory instrument in the North, SR(NI) 163 of 1975, defines the sea boundary, something that had not been defined in previous legislation. What have we done to challenge such unilateral moves? Are we now talking about surrendering title by offering a rent to the Crown Estate for Lough Foyle?

This is a complex territory. There are many other points I could have added but I cannot do so in the time available. I ask the Cathaoirleach for some leeway to allow me to conclude. Meanwhile this is a financial burden on the Foyle ferry service, which I fought to have reprioritised as a domestic service so that the international security for which we were paying, which was an economic noose, could be removed. We now find that the Crown Estate has put a claim on a percentage of the turnover, yet another ridiculous attempt at an another economic noose in an area that does not need it.

As I said, it is also the issue of the veto that leads me to ask again under what guise does the Crown Estate now have any claim to the Foyle? Will we clarify that right, challenge it or, if proven to exist and if necessary, buy it out so that the development of the river, in all its forms, can happen by the association that was set up to do that, namely, the Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission? It should be unimpaired in driving the developmental potential of one of our most important resources. Will we halt negotiations at this point with the Crown Estate in regard to developing a lease and have it take a much more fundamental look at its position? I put these questions to the Minister of State, who I am sure, as an Irish Minister, will be interested in asserting our citizens' interests in the north west too.