 Although Rockall is closer to the UK coast than to the Irish coast, Ireland does not recognise the UK's territorial claim to Rockall, "which would be the basis for a claim to a 12-mile territorial sea".Ireland regards Rockall as irrelevant when determining the boundaries of the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) as the rock is uninhabitable and in signing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1997, the UK has agreed that "Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf".In 1988, Ireland and the United Kingdom signed an EEZ boundary agreement, ignoring the rock per UNCLOS.