Officials had ‘nightmare’ task in identifying 208 North border crossings

Ireland has 208 border crossings, the first officially agreed count since the island was partitioned almost a century ago has found.

Emails between government technicians who have been carrying out the painstaking months-long process reveal they endured a “nightmare” trying to definitively map out all roads, paths and dirt tracks that traverse the 500km frontier.

As well as technical limitations, confusion reigned over crossings where the Border runs up the middle of roads, juts in and out of routes or where roads are privately owned on one side and publicly maintained on the other. The findings may come as little comfort to politicians advocating a technology-based solution to avoiding a hard border in the event of the UK pulling out of the customs union when it leaves the EU next year.