evidence: Irish lawyers and diplomats have maintained that nothing as insubstantial or uninhabitable as Rockall can be said to constitute a national territory in any meaningful sense. And particularly in the sense of such a status bestowing economic rights. Irish diplomats successfully fought hard to establish the principle (see clause above) in international law at interminable UN meetings on the drafting of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea. [...] In that light the Government has always insisted that the waters around Rockall form part of European Union waters under the Common Fisheries Policy, to which the principle of equal access for the vessels of all EU member states applies. [...] Denmark, Iceland and Ireland had protested against the use of Rockall as a base point for the British fishery zone established in 1977. The UK claimed sovereignty over the rock and sought formally to annex it under its 1972 Island of Rockall Act. But when it signed up to the Law of the Sea Convention in 1997, it appeared that London had accepted implicitly that Rockall was not being seen as a base point.