Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Question 58: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the position regarding Rockall Island. [41920/09]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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During the 1960s and 1970s the issue of Rockall was a source of legal and political controversy in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. Much of that controversy lay in fears at the time that jurisdiction over Rockall and similar rocks and skerries was thought to be central to claiming mineral rights in the adjacent sea-bed and fishing rights in the surrounding seas, as well as to the delimitation of maritime boundaries.

However, during the course of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which took place from 1973 to 1982, the Irish delegation worked hard to establish a satisfactory legal regime applicable to islands. This effort was ultimately successful. 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. Both Ireland and the United Kingdom are parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is accordingly accepted by both states that Rockall cannot be used as a basis for delimiting their respective continental shelves or fisheries zones and this was duly reflected in the Ireland-UK continental shelf boundary agreement concluded in 1988.