Smith challenged on `surrender of ownership' of seas

The Nautical Institute has described the draft White Paper on Defence as both inaccurate and misleading and has challenged the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, to justify his "apparent proposal to surrender ownership" of Ireland's maritime territory.

The institute's Irish branch, which represents both mercantile and naval seagoing personnel, says the policy reflected in the draft paper circulated last week shows either indifference to, or ignorance of this State's international maritime responsibilities. Ireland's maritime patrolling capacity is 16 times less than the European norm, it says.

This State has potentially the richest maritime resources of any EU member, yet the White Paper represents a "policy of abdication" of responsibility, the institute's spokesman, Mr Gary Delaney, said yesterday.

The final draft of the Defence White Paper, due to go before Cabinet next week, maintains the Naval Service and Air Corps as separate defence wings, in spite of a Department of Finance proposal to merge the two into a coastguard.

The Nautical Institute welcomes this decision, but argues that the paper ignores the case made in several submissions to the Government for a greater State role in policing a resource valued at £30 billion.

Section 4.11.3 of the draft states clearly that "having regard to the defence and security environment assessment, the Government consider that there is no case for a significant shift in defence provision towards an enhanced naval contribution".

Mr Delaney said the paper gave the impression that defence was all about war and peace, when in fact it was about ownership and responsibility. The emphasis in the policy was on saving money rather than on a strategy for the future in terms of protecting a marine resource 10 times the land mass of this island.

Mr Delaney said the recommendation that an unspecified number of vessels in the Naval Service fleet be used for fishery protection only, with consequent reduction in crew size, effectively reduced the Navy to fishery protection only. The demands of search-and-rescue, drug interdiction and environmental protection were not recognised, he said.

The paper contained "no policy on policing of the quarter-million square nautical miles of sea area over which this State exercises sovereign rights", he said.

The institute was also concerned about the absence of any policy on an increase in "clandestine migration by sea" or on the "imminent explosion in commercial maritime traffic".