Irish border checks

There is much in Nicholas Boyle’s article (“The new Irish problem”, 3 November) that deserves pondering in London, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Brussels. However, I wonder at his claim that it is the work of the EU that made the distinction between Derry and Donegal no more evident than the boundary between two London boroughs.

It was hardly evident to two teenage boys in 1947 when they speculated on when and where they had crossed the border travelling by train on the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway to see the old Royal Navy fortifications on Lough Swilly close by Buncrana. Any customs check there may have been (and I have no memory of any) would have ceased on the signing of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement in 1965.