Underwater hill of drums marked with skulls and crossbones off Donegal prompts fresh concern over dumped British mustard gas and phosphorous bombs

The matter was raised by the Sinn Féin T.D. for Donegal Pearse Doherty who told the Oireachtas that five separate dumps off the coast of the county are believed to contain British munitions.

He gave a chilling account of a dump near Tory island where there is reputed to be an underwater hill of black drums marked with skulls and crossbones.

Deputy Doherty said that at the end of the Second World War the British held over 1.2 million tonnes of surplus ammunition and bombs and that its favoured disposal method was dumping at sea.

Derry was a chemical defence storage site and noted as a chemical weapons site: MoD

He referred to a report from the Oslo-Paris Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR).

"Unfortunately, we are aware of a number of these dumps off the coast of Donegal. In 2010, an OSPAR report stated that there were five separate dumps off the coast of Donegal, each with dangerous and potentially lethal substances such as mustard gas and phosphorous.

"The report states that the true extent of the dumps and the danger they pose is unknown. The reality is that this could be seriously dangerous for inhabitants of this area. The people of west Donegal have raised concerns about the nature of these chemicals and the risk to inhabitants, sea life and the environment," said Deputy Doherty.

According to the accounts of deep sea divers there is 'a large area of the seabed littered with large black drums with hazard signage on them in the waters off Tory Island.'

One recently recounted in an interview with Raidió na Gaeltachta: "We were looking for shipwrecks, went down 40 to 45 metres and came across black drums with green stuff growing on them. There were a few thousand of them. They were heaped in a hill-like structure and had skull and crossbones on them."

MoD confirm Derry site was screened in '˜Project Cleansweep', the military's chemical warfare contamination review

Deputy Doherty said he spoke to one diver about the issue.

"The diver to whom I personally was speaking said that all he could see around him in every direction were these barrels on the seabed. To me, this account is deeply disturbing," he told the Dáil.

The Sinn Féin T.D. said the government needed to undertake a comprehensive analysis of what is contained in the dumps.

"My question and the question some in west Donegal also have relates to their legitimate concerns about the dump behind Tory Island and other dumps off the coast of Donegal. Will the Department look at the stability of these chemical weapons which, in some cases, were dumped nearly 100 years ago? Are they still safe? What is in them? How large are they? Is it okay to leave them on our seabed?" he asked.