Peter CostelloMost people think they are aware of the size of Ireland and its boundaries. But a series of files now released, dealing with different aspects of policy, suggest we may all be unaware of just how large the national territory actually is.
One file, for instance, deals with the boundaries of Dublin. A special order had to be made by the Government to deal with this. One problem dealt with the land reclaimed from the sea, which had to be formally added to the city. Other parcels of land were transferred to other counties. This may seem to be dealing with very small issues, and yet major problems of land holding, property rights, and civil duties might well be affected by not having correct delimitations of the areas involved.
Far more contentious, however, were issues arising in the Northern troubles with the British authorities over what went on in Carlingford Lough, Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly. Both the Foyle and Lough Swilly had in former times been important anchorages for the British navy. Around 1985 the British navy was still active in these waters, but with a different security purpose.
The areas under the control of Ireland and of Northern Ireland are clearly mapped and known. Yet this did not prevent there being many clashes when the British security forces were trying to prevent smuggling of arms and personnel into the North.
Yachts would be boarded from time to time, in what the navigator claimed were Irish waters; but this did not take them far with the British military.
On one occasion a ferry boat, in regular service, carrying a party of school children back from an overseas visit was stopped and searched. The children refused to be suppressed and made abusive remarks and hand signs to the party searching the boat. Such clashes have ended with the Peace Settlement.
But in Lough Foyle, sandwiched as it is between Co. Derry and Inishowen, was also a troublesome spot. One interesting historical point of law emerges from the files.
Since 1922 the Irish Government took the view, that under the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921, the authorities in Northern Ireland only controlled the immediate shore of the maritime counties such as Derry, Antrim and Down.
Beyond that the actual sea within the 12 miles maritime boundary was under the control of the Dublin authorities.
However, perhaps wisely, though they claimed this, they were careful not to plead in court or before an arbitrator, just in case the matter went against them before the judges.
It seems this is still the situation, in the view of Dublin, on a de jure basis, rather than a de facto basis.
In the years before 1985 the real dispute was over Rockall, the stony outcrop in the wastes of the North Atlantic. In 1955 this had been formerly claimed by the United Kingdom, as the island lay in the range of the rocket test site in Scotland where they were developing ground to air missiles. British marines planted a flag on the island to confirm this.
Though the first and most important scientific mission to Rockall had been launched in 1896 by the Royal Irish Academy (as described in 1937 by Robert Lloyd Praeger in his classic book on Irish natural history The Way that I Went) the British saw the rock as part of Scotland – which may add a dimension of dispute in time to come when Scotland recovers its independence. And even then there will remain a claim not just by Ireland, but by Denmark, the sovereign authority of the largely self-governing Faroe Islands.
In geological terms, however Rockall, does not belong either to the continental shelf of Scotland, or of Ireland. It is part of Iceland. So it seems to be not so much an outpost of Europe, but an outpost of North America!
Recently on a visit to the Irish Geological Survey headquarters in Beggar’s Bush, Dublin in search of a special map of Connemara, I saw hanging up another map which showed in full colour Ireland’s “Exclusive Economic Zone” (EEZ) in the Atlantic. This was not for sale and no more copies were available. But it was fascinating.
It suggested that “the real Ireland” is in fact more extensive than people commonly appreciate.
They don’t think of what is under the ocean as real territory. But in these days of increasingly desperate searches for oil and natural gas resources wherever they can be found, whether by on-shore fracking or off-shore drilling, we will have to think of the EEZ area as part, and an increasingly important part, of the national territory of the real Ireland.
It brings to mind the old prophecy, attributed to St Patrick by a family’s great-grandmother, that before the end of the world Ireland would be largely under the sea. That is one prophecy, at least, which seems to have been fulfilled. Welcome to Doomsday?