Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 111: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if Ireland's territorial waters have been extended with international agreement; and the background to same. [19167/07]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea provides that a coastal state exercises sovereignty over its territorial sea, which is the belt of water located immediately adjacent to its land territory. Every state has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles. Sovereignty extends to the bed and subsoil of the territorial sea. Ireland ratified the Convention on 21 June 1996 and has established a territorial sea 12 nautical miles in breadth.

The Convention also provides that a coastal state exercises sovereign rights over its continental shelf for the purpose of exploiting its mineral and non-living natural resources. Each coastal state is entitled to a continental shelf 200 nautical miles in breadth regardless of whether the shelf naturally extends this far, subject only to the same rights of neighbouring states. Where the shelf naturally extends beyond 200 nautical miles this must be established to the satisfaction of the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf before a coastal state can exercise its sovereign rights there.

Ireland's shelf naturally extends beyond 200 nautical miles both to the west and the south of the country. Scientific and technical data must be submitted to the UN Commission in order to satisfy it that all claims are valid. For the purposes of our claims we have divided our shelf into three sectors.

In April of this year the UN Commission issued its recommendations concerning the limits of the area claimed in the first sector to the south-west of the country on the edge of an area known as the Porcupine Abyssal Plain which was the subject of Ireland's first submission, made in May 2005. The Government, shall by Order, designate the additional seabed enclosed by these limits as continental shelf belonging to the State. Work is currently underway in this regard. The second sector of claimed extended continental shelf in the Celtic Sea and the Bay of Biscay was the subject of a joint submission made together with the UK, France and Spain in May 2006 and the UN Commission's recommendations are expected in September of this year. The question of delimitation of the zone established on the basis of these recommendations between the four states concerned will be considered thereafter. Finally, we claim shelf on the Hatton-Rockall Plateau in the North East Atlantic where there are overlapping claims by Iceland, Denmark and the UK. Despite meeting regularly since 2002, the four states have as yet been unable to agree on the making of a joint submission or coordinated national submissions. These consultations are continuing.