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NATIONWIDE – ALONG THE BORDER

Nationwide - Mary Kennedy with Garret Carr who walked the whole border Image Name: Nationwide - Mary Kennedy with Garret Carr who walked the whole border
Nationwide - Anne Cassin at Wattle Bridge - along the border Image Name: Nationwide - Anne Cassin at Wattle Bridge - along the border
Nationwide - Anne Cassin at Lough Melvin - along the border Image Name: Nationwide - Anne Cassin at Lough Melvin - along the border

 

Garrett Carr who has already journeyed the border by foot and by canoe observed that it was like ‘discovering a new country’ and that ‘the border just didn’t divide Ireland into the North and the South, but it created this third thing in the middle – the borderland’.

Shortly after the Good Friday Agreement a man called John Byrne had a vision and opened a Border Interpretive Centre on the border line selling T-shirts, postcards, rocks, model watchtowers and authentic border soil. Busloads of tourists and media arrived for the event, all under the shadow of helicopters flying overhead and an operational ironclad watchtower on top of a nearby hill. The venture was short lived and closed after one week. John Byrne returned to the building recently almost 20 years after the event.

In Clones, Katie McGuigan mother of boxing legend Barry – recalls her son’s journey to Laurel Hill Boxing Club. ‘On his bicycle, he used to go in and out of the border seven times before he got to Laurel Hill’!

Farmer and master storyteller Eugene McCabe who lives on the Monaghan/ Fermanagh border said it was his conscience which forced him to write about the shocking events going on around him. ‘It was like walking on ice…to look and look again and be sure you hadn’t overstepped the line in any way because naturally you didn’t want to add to the trouble’.

Growing up in a castle on the border was tricky business when the troubles were raging. Sammy Leslie from Castle Leslie was well aware of being judged outside the house. ‘People didn’t know whether you were English protestant – therefore they liked you or they hated you – or they didn’t know if you were a catholic nationalist and which they liked you or they hated you’; So playing on her loyalties between her protestant and catholic relatives, Sammy became an expert at keeping safe.

Publican and undertaker Pat Britton lives in Pettigo, the village which was sliced in two after partition. Even though his pub is in Donegal, he says he has ‘more in common with West Tyrone and Fermanagh than Co Donegal’. The border headache has always been a big part of his life and he recalls tough times when eleven out of twelve roads were blocked near his village.

On the 50th Anniversary of the early civil rights marches in Derry, Pat Hume reflects on the transformation of the city since the Good Friday Agreement. ‘People can come together and do come together so much more frequently than before the bridge was built’.

As Brexit gathers pace, businesses are worried. Pig farmers Tommy and Brian Brady from Cavan bring 300-400 pigs across the border to the factory in Cookstown every week. Over ten thousand pigs cross into the North each week for processing. The Brady brothers reckon that the Irish market ‘does not have capacity to process those pigs’ and they worry what will happen to them.

Watch RTÉ Nationwide – Along the Border on Monday 16th April, Wednesday 18th April, Friday 20th April at 7pm on RTÉ One