The International Maritime Organisation, the United Nations agency responsible for safety and security at sea, has adopted the first set of international rules for the removal of shipwrecks.
The new rules provide strong powers to act with no legal responsibility relating to the removal of wrecks or the goods carried.
They were agreed at a five-day meeting held in Nairobi, and represent the first sweeping set of rules of its kind and which each country will sign into law.
Ireland is a member of the organisation and up to now governments around the world have faced complex legal difficulties in dealing with vessels wrecked on their coastlines.
According to the IMO, there are an estimated 1,300 potentially hazardous shipwrecks on coastlines around the world, which have been abandoned by owners trying to avoid responsibility for removing them.
This does not include listed historic or protected wrecks but are more recent shipping casualties causing environmental pollution or threatening the safe navigation of other shipping.
The Secretary General of the IMO, Efthimios Mitropoulos, said coastal states had been pressing for strong international laws to deal with abandoned shipwrecks and the legal framework had now been provided.
