COASTAL communities in Donegal remain threatened by secretive British dumping of hundreds of tonnes of chemical weapons, a campaigner has warned.
In all 24 ships loaded with nerve gas and a cocktail of other deadly chemical weapons were scuttled off the Irish coast after World War Two.
Campaigner Bernard Moffatt, who has been probing the British Ministry of Defence over the issue for the past 30 years, says the Irish Government needs to do more on the issue.
His research shows that nine of the 24 ships went to the area north of Donegal and also the Rockall deep.
Another 12 ships went to the Biscay area of south west Ireland while he believes two were diverted to Beaufort Dyke because of bad weather in the Atlantic.
Mr Moffatt warned: “Three ships, Empire Claire, Vogtland and Kotka carrying Tabun nerve gas bombs went into the dump off Donegal. Donegal got all the nasty stuff.
“Empire Claire was sunk with 3,500 tonnes of the material the exact quantities on the others are not known but were probably similar.
“Most of the 24 ships involved in the dumping between 1945 and 1956 carried between 6,000 and 9,000 tonnes of ordnance.
“The operation commenced with the scuttling of the Empire Peel in July 1945 described as carrying an ‘unknown tonnage’ of defective bombs.
“The operation concluded with an ‘unidentified’ ship in September 1956 carrying 3,200 tonnes of mustard gas and phosgene bombs.
“This may have been one of the ships scuttled in Beaufort Dyke because the main munitions debris washed up in Mann, south west Scotland and the east coast of Ireland in recent years has been phosphorous based.”
Mr Moffatt, from the Isle of Man based Celtic League, said: “As far as we are aware although there has been monitoring of some inshore dumps particularly Beaufort Dyke little has been done by the United Kingdom since it tipped these terrible cargoes into the Atlantic to check those locations.
“It’s a classic case of out of sight out of mind.
“We believe strongly that the Irish Government must put pressure on their British counterparts to end the secrecy around these dumps to make sure coastal communities in Ireland are not being adversely affected by the dumps.”
The SS Clan Matheson bought by the British Ministry of Transport when obsolete in 1955 and renamed the EMPIRE CLAIRE she was scuttled off the North of Donegal (56°30′N 12°00′W) on the 27/7/55 with a cargo of tabun nerve gas bombs.
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