Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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545. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government in relation to a report compiled in 2010 by the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Commission into past dumping at sea of chemical weapons and munitions in the commission's maritime area, which gave details of chemical munition dump sites off the County Donegal coast, if he is aware of the exact contents of these known dump sites; if he will provide details of the action which has been taken to date to ensure that these sites do not pose a serious risk to the public and to the environment; his plans to initiate a thorough risk assessment report into chemical munitions dump sites located off the County Donegal coast; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39437/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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The Oslo Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft 1972, now the OSPAR Convention, deals with the dumping of munitions in the sea. The OSPAR Convention applies to the waters of the north east Atlantic and Ireland is a party to the Convention.

The 2010 report contains a map of historic dumpsites as reported to OSPAR by contracting parties in the past. The closest of the dumpsites to the coast of Donegal is more than 77 nautical miles (more than 140km) distant and the dumpsites are located in the Rockall Trough, the shallowest part of which is located in 1250 metres of water while the deepest part reaches to 2550 metres.

I am not aware that any encounters with chemical or conventional weapons have been reported in that area and the current best advice on minimising risk from historic munitions dumpsites is not to remove them but to leave the munitions on the seabed to disintegrate naturally.

Marine Notice 16 of 2001, which is available on the website of the Department of Tourism, Transport and Sport, gives guidelines for dealing with explosives sighted or picked up at sea in trawls and for the removal of explosive items from wrecks. This notice covers chemical and conventional munitions and requires all encounters with such munitions to be reported to the Irish Navy and the Irish Coast Guard.