Cross-Border co-operation has a long way to go yet judging by the experience of the backbenchers from Leinster House and Westminster in Co Cavan for the bi-annual meeting of the British Irish InterParliamentary Body earlier this week. The group, including former Northern secretaries Merlyn Rees (now Lord) and Peter Brooke, whose antecedents came from the locality, were entertained to dinner by their Irish hosts in Castle Leslie on Monday night.
It's an hour's drive from the conference hotel, the Slieve Russell in Ballyconnell to the castle in Glaslough if you take the most direct route, which criss-crosses the Border. But the buses had to go the long way round, adding another 30 minutes to the journey. The reason was that Garda and the RUC escorts would have had to be changed too often, so the long trek to and from dinner became even longer. Will their experience speed up agreement on doing away with the Border altogether?