Officials map out all border crossings on island before Brexit
GOVERNMENT officials from Dublin and Belfast are working together to definitively map out for the first time the number of border crossings on the island, it can be revealed.
Documents released under Freedom of Information show the exercise was agreed last year between the Department of Transport and the North’s Department of Infrastructure.
Minutes of a meeting involving transport chiefs on September 19 in Dublin show Transport Infrastructure Ireland, which is responsible for the country’s road network, agreed to help with a ‘Northern Ireland request in relation to agreeing the number of border road crossings’. The minute is recorded under the sub-heading ‘Brexit’.
The Department of Infrastructure in Northern Ireland has confirmed it requested cross-border co-operation to establish all crossings on the 500km frontier. The findings are expected in the coming months.
It is estimated there are around 275 road crossings between Ireland and Northern Ireland – the UK’s only land border with the EU – but the exact figure has never been officially established.
The final figure should confirm there are more border crossings in Ireland than the 137 along the entire border between the EU and all the countries to the east of the bloc.
One of the issues that needs to be agreed is how big a track or path must be before it constitutes a crossing. Some roads cross the border several times.
Future arrangements for the border is central to ongoing negotiations between London and Brussels over the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
Only 20 border crossings were open during the Troubles, but all were reopened during the peace process.
All sides in the Brexit negotiations have insisted there should be no return to a ‘hard border’ which was heavily militarised during the Troubles.
But there is no agreement as to how this would work, as Britain’s prime minister Theresa May has insisted the UK will also leave the EU’s Customs Union.
A spokeswoman for the North’s Department for Infrastructure said it ‘is currently carrying out a mapping exercise to map where the Northern Ireland road network crosses the border’.
She added: ‘This exercise was instigated by the department and officials are currently engaging with the Department of Transport [in Dublin] to confirm the accuracy of the map.
‘It is hoped that this work will be completed soon.’
The Northern Ireland Office, the British government’s department responsible for the region, said it had no knowledge of the mapping exercise.
The Department of Transport said: ‘Following a request from the Northern Ireland authorities, it was agreed the two administrations would work together to quantify and identify the location of cross-border public road crossings between Northern Ireland and Ireland.’ The department, Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the Department for Infrastructure have each assigned one official to the mapping exercise.
The Department of Transport estimates the exercise will be completed between April and June this year.
Stephen Donnelly, Fianna Fáil’s Brexit spokesman, said he believed the mapping exercise was clearly linked to preparations for the UK’s pull-out from the EU, and questioned why an official figure on border crossings did not already exist.
‘If you go back to the Foot and Mouth outbreak, the border was essentially sealed by the Irish Army to stop cows going south – the institutional knowledge must already exist somewhere,’ he said.
An estimated 275 crossings Some roads cross several times