Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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119. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the reason Ireland abstained in the vote on the proposal by Mauritius to refer the issue of its sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and the question of whether the decolonisation of Mauritius had been carried out in a lawful manner to the International Court of Justice at the Hague, in view of the Chagos Archipelago’s subsequent separation. [26620/18]

Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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120. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if Ireland will support the case of Mauritius for its sovereignty over the Chagos Islands at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. [26621/18]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 119 and 120 together.

The UN General Assembly voted on 22 June 2017 on a Resolution put forward by Mauritius to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, prior to Mauritian independence from the UK. The vote on the resolution was 95 in favour, 15 against, with 65 abstentions.

Ireland gave considerable attention to the Resolution put before the UN General Assembly on this matter. We weighed the various points of view and listened carefully to the arguments put forward.

After very careful review we felt that the most appropriate step to take was abstention, given the arguments from one side that this is an improper attempt to bring a bilateral dispute before the ICJ and from the other that there are matters of general relevance to the international community relating to de-colonisation.

An abstention is consistent with the position Ireland has taken on previous ICJ referral resolutions, including in 2003 on the separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territory and in 2010 on Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

The ICJ Statute and the Court’s Rules of Procedure provide that the ICJ may communicate with States which it believes are likely to be able to furnish information on the question and invite them to submit written or oral statements. The deadline for written statements has now expired and the Court has not yet indicated whether oral proceedings will take place in this case.

It is now for the ICJ to decide whether it has jurisdiction to deal with the matter; and, if so, whether it is appropriate to exercise that jurisdiction; and, if it is appropriate to do so, to deal with the merits of the arguments put before it.