Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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26. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the progress in having the international community, including the EU and the UN, recognise Ireland’s sovereignty over Rockall. [38406/20]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Rockall is a small uninhabitable rock located approximately 160 nautical miles west of the Scottish islands of St. Kilda and 230 nautical miles to the north-west of Donegal. During the 1960s and 1970s the issue of Rockall was a source of legal and political controversy in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. The UK claimed sovereignty over Rockall in 1955 and purported to annex it under its 1972 Island of Rockall Act.

While Ireland has never recognised British sovereignty over Rockall, neither have we ever sought to claim sovereignty ourselves. The consistent position of successive Irish Governments has been that Rockall and similar rocks and skerries should have no significance for establishing legal claims to continental shelf or an exclusive economic zone. Ireland, together with a number of like-minded countries, worked hard to advance this position at the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea which took place from 1972 to 1982 and I'm glad to say that it is fully reflected in the Convention adopted at the end of that Conference. Article 121, paragraph 3 of the UN Law of the Sea Convention provides that: ‘Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.’