The Government's White Paper on Defence should consider transforming the Naval Service into a coastguard on the US model, according to the Nautical Institute's Irish branch.
The Naval Service's ability is "severely compromised" due to a lack of specialist vessels, personnel and funding, the institute - an international body based in London - says in a submission to the Department of Defence. The institute represents both the mercantile and naval wings of the marine sector worldwide. The White Paper on Defence, to be published later this year, must recognise the Republic is responsible for a £30 billion ecological resource, its submission says. It observes that Ireland's expenditure on maritime policing is the lowest in Europe.
This means that drug smugglers have a more than 20 times greater chance of reaching the lucrative European market via the Irish maritime corridor - a point also made in a draft RACO Naval Service submission for the White Paper published late last year.
Fraud among commercial fishing fleets in Irish waters is also running at "hundreds of millions of pounds", it says. The existing fleet of seven ships, with an eighth being built in Britain, is inadequate to implement many new pieces of international legislation to which Ireland is bound, including conventions on pollution and dumping. Over 90 per cent of this island's current territory lies underwater; recent estimates put a market value of £2 billion annually for fish caught.
