Mr. John Paul Feeley:

There is no quantifiable evidence as of yet. Until it actually happens, we will not know what impact it is going to have. However, the reality is that people in the part of Cavan in question naturally gravitate into Enniskillen to do their business. Whether sterling is strong or weak, people in that part of Cavan go into Enniskillen to a greater or lesser extent. We are engaging with Fermanagh and Omagh District Council on an ongoing basis in regard to the Marble Arch Caves geopark. There is a lot of constructive engagement at community level and local authority level where we ignore the fact we are in two different jurisdictions in terms of what we are doing. If a hard border were put in place, all of that would obviously be pulled asunder.

I travel to Cavan town for various reasons a couple of times a week, and I go through Fermanagh without thinking about it. Some years ago, I would not have done that, for different reasons. Many Border roads were closed before the peace process and, thankfully, all of them reopened. We cannot realistically expect all of them to be manned if we go back to a very hard border. Communities had been making up for the poor relations and division which had been imposed as a result of partition and the Troubles, and they were coming to terms with that and getting to know their neighbours again. We are now looking at a scenario where, through no wish of the people on this island, the Border is being reimposed in the worst possible way.

It is also important to put on record that, over the years, the Border has been a blockage to investment and development throughout that region of the country. The PEACE funding put in place was supposed to be additional to expenditure which we might have normally expected from either the Administration north of the Border or from our own Government. In reality, it was used to replace the share we should have been getting to make up for the historic deficiency. We are still living with that historic deficiency.