A hearing starts on Tuesday at the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague in a dispute between the Republic and Britain over a nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northern England, officials said this evening.
"This is a test case to see how international treaties on preserving the marine environment will be dealt with," said Rianne Teule of the environmental organisation Greenpeace.
The case comes under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Hearings are expected to continue until June 27 in The Hague.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration is an independent governmental organisation created in 1899 by the The Hague Convention to rule in disputes between states or states and private persons.
Last October the Government took landmark legal action against Britain at the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague under the 1992 OSPAR (Oslo/Paris) Convention for the protection of the marine environment of the Northeast Atlantic.
The Republic accused Britain of withholding information on the grounds of commercial sensitivity about Sellafield's operations. No ruling has been handed down in that case yet.
Another case is also being heard by the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This is a separate but related case to the proceedings in The Hague.
It deals with the marine pollution threat, the dangers of nuclear shipments up and down the Irish Sea and the MOX plant.
AFP