Ten years ago next May, history was made in the town of Dingle, Co Kerry, when it hosted the State's first public inquiry under the 1933 Foreshore Act. It lasted 14 days and could have provided material for a John B. Keane play. Although the subject was lease approval for a privately owned marina in a State harbour, political and personal rivalries soon began to cloud the environmental debate.
The Fungi factor, the Haughey factor, State plans to purchase the Blasket Islands, and local objectors' support for an alternative marina all came to the fore during a hearing which had moments of great levity, amid much rancour. In the end, the inspector, Thomas McMahon, recommended granting the foreshore lease for the project at the Dingle Skellig Hotel, subject to a number of conditions.
The venture never went ahead - but a State marina, which has proved to be highly successful, was built in the town. Ironically, it might never have been realised, were it not for the initiative shown by the private developer, Xavier McAuliffe, and the support of his associate, former Taoiseach Charles Haughey - nicknamed during the hearing "the puppet-master of Kinsealy".
Some 10 years on, small battles are still being waged over rights to parts of the 2,700 miles of coastline - with, sadly, similar vitriol in some cases. Up in Mayo, the farmer who has fenced off access at Uggool beach has become something of a celebrity among his neighbours, and the focus of much anger among holiday homeowners and walkers who frequent the area. Further south in Connemara, a shellfish farmer, who has learned from the French how best to cultivate the coastline, has met strong local opposition over his plans for an oyster farm off a beach.
Oyster cultivation is one of the most benign aquaculture activities, and his trestles will rarely be seen - apart from spring low tides. It is a sustainable, year-round, economic activity. Yet notices objecting to his plans were put up at his children's school. Were he proposing to build a hotel next to the shoreline for the short-term tourist season, he might already be dubbed a local hero, with politicians knocking at his door with applications for EU grants.
In the sensitive political constituency of Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, construction of the largest State marina project, costing more than £20 million, is well under way. It involved lengthy consultation, spanning a decade, and there is much support for the initiative. However, the apparent defensive attitude of the Dun Laoghaire Harbour Authority towards those who have reservations about certain details, such as use of the public Coal Harbour, has fuelled a growing sense of unease - and a degree of animosity towards the project among regular sailors who will influence its sustainability.
The list continues - reflecting a confused attitude to the coast, and to the sea beyond it, which does not sit comfortably with our status as islanders. Lone voices, such as the maritime historian, Dr John de Courcy Ireland, have cited plenty of reasons to be proud of our past, while the Coastwatch Europe co-ordinator, Karin Dubsky, has highlighted the need to protect the shoreline environment for the future. Ambiguity and ignorance at the highest level is highlighted by maritime law lecturer, Dr Clive Symmons of Trinity College, Dublin, and NUI, Galway, in his recently revised book, Ireland and the Law of the Sea, published last October.
As Dr Symmons, in his preface, says Irish parliamentary records often reveal a legacy of neglect on even the most basic principles of maritime law among TDs - and among Government ministers. Worse still, he says, they often show a lack of interest. He gives one shocking example: Ireland was one of the early signatories of the UN Law of the Sea Convention, but it was 14 years before the Dail ratified it.
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Joan Burton, described ratification of the convention as "probably one of the most important motions ever to come before this house". Yet, as a colleague pointed out, there were only four TDs present in the Dail chamber at the time, and interest in it was "minute".
It was no better some 40 years earlier, when the then Minister for External Affairs Frank Aiken, was questioned in the Dail on the position regarding Irish territorial seas. He offered TDs the opportunity to find out the answer themselves from Department of Defence maps!
Ireland has been "notoriously slow", Dr Symmons says, in ratifying several important sea-related treaties, particularly those concerned with pollution. When the Kowloon Bridge floundered off the west Cork coast in 1987, the Government conceded ail that the State's failure to ratify some of the more important maritime pollution treaties then related to the fact that they would all require "new legislation".
Even the "much-heralded" establishment of a new Marine Institute almost a decade ago continued "this saga of benign neglect", Symmons writes, as it has had no legal representative on its board, though its terms of reference encompass legal issues. This is more alarming, given the likelihood of further conflicts over dwindling fish resources, and the battle which may take place further offshore as the State's £21 million seabed survey begins to identify potentially new areas for mineral exploration - and exploitation.
Reading Symmons's comprehensive work - which ranges from rights over Rockall to the need for legislation on piracy and protection of archaeological wrecks - it could be too easy to work oneself into a complete depression. Even the laudable concept of coastal zone management, adopted by so many other countries, appears to have fallen foul of bureaucracy, acute staffing shortages in the relevant Government departments and a lack of political will.
However, recent developments do give grounds for hope.
One is the initiative taken by those involved in fish farming, following the bitter environmental rows of the late 1980s which coincided with the anglers' rod licence war. A few weeks ago, in Cill Chiarain, Connemara, the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Frank Fahey, initiated CLAMS.
This fishy acronym stands for Co-ordinated Local Aquaculture Management System. It aims to minimise potential conflict at local level, and has been introduced in several areas where aquaculture development is taking place on the south coast by the junior minister, Hugh Byrne.
The second is a most significant diplomatic exercise in the south-west, which involved all the negotiating skills of a Belfast agreement or a Dayton peace accord. Life and death it may not have been, but sustainable survival was, and is, at the heart of the Bantry Bay Charter (see panel).
It took three years and lots of hard work, but success was achieved in late September when it was presented to the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Noel Dempsey, in Bantry's Westlodge Hotel. More than 60 organisations with involvement in the Bantry Bay coastal zone signed up to a community-based management strategy for the area.
At a time when people are still grappling with the highly ambitious idea of coastal zone management, both of these developments serve as links - with immediate and very practical application. The underlying fear among several non-governmental organisations is that political commitment to coastal zone management will be further weakened by the race to make the most of this current economic boom.
And it isn't confined to the coast. Mineral exploration is set to become mineral exploitation off the north-west coast, once the Corrib gas field is declared commercial. Speaking at a recent seminar hosted by the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI), which is managing the seven-year seabed survey, the need for offshore policy initiatives was identified by Dr Anthony Grehan of NUI Galway's Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute and Lieut Cdr Mark Mellett, staff officer with responsibility for plans and policy at Naval Service headquarters in Haulbowline, Co Cork.
Dr Grehan believes that stewardship of the resource is essential, through an integrated ocean management strategy. This should be easier to apply than coastal zone management, given the absence of land borders, he maintained. Duchas, the Heritage Service, which has current legal competence in this area, is "hopelessly underresourced", he said.
Lieut Cdr Mellett spent time in 1999 with the US Coastguard and has had direct experience of how it can be done - both inshore and offshore. He speaks about monetary worth, based on values in a report two years ago by the Independent World Commission on the Oceans. He estimates the Irish territorial sea area, which is 14 times the land territory, currently has a market value of #3 billion, in terms of food, water-based leisure, tourism and technology. However, in non-market terms, the value could be as much as #50 billion.
He forecasts increasing conflict over fisheries and over-exploitation; closed areas, known as marine environmental protection areas (MEPS), have already been proposed, in an effort to help stocks recover. Environmental security will also become more pressing, with maritime traffic expected to triple - at increased travelling speed - in the next two decades. The hulks of the Ranga and Kowloon Bridge off this coastline, and recent "near misses", including the Sea Empress and the Asian Parade car carrier off the east coast, are testimony to this, he says.
Maritime "defence" is a wider issue than the presence of foreign submarines in Irish waters - a presence we haven't got the capability to deal with anyway, in his view. With fisheries protection being its core duty - assisted now by geographical information systems that can monitor vessel movements - environmental security has to have greater priority, he says.
He quotes Frederico Mayor, director general of UNESCO, speaking in 1998: "This planet does not belong to the adults of today and should not be managed on the basis of short-term considerations of economic gain or political power . . ." Lieut Cdr Mellett warns of the need to avoid "inter-generational sabotage" of the marine resource. "It is our job to counter just that," he says.
Ireland and the Law of the Sea, by Clive Symmons, is published by Round Hall Press. £98.