Going for the border bus bonanza

It pays to take the bus from Lifford to Dublin, through Strabane.

Would you go the extra mile for Bus Éireann, Ireland’s national bus service? I did yesterday (Tuesday) when I took the Letterkenny express bus to Dublin.

Not only that, I went the extra mile on the outward and return journey – and I saved myself €5 (or £4) for each of those miles. Surely that must be the best (or worst) mileage rate in the land and it was all courtesy of yet another foible of our fickle frontier.

I got the 9.45am bus from Lifford to Dublin Busaras and returned on the 8.45pm departure. On each leg of the journey, I went through Strabane, just over the bridge from Lifford. From where I live, Strabane would be the more expected point of my departure and arrival.

A small cross-border mile with a big saving.

The reason I set out from Lifford on the Letterkenny-Dublin express service is that I booked my Bus Éireann ticket online. That does not allow the option of boarding in Strabane, presumably because it is ‘across the border’.

In any event, I discovered that my same-day return ticket would cost me €21.85. A bargain, I thought so I enquired about the alternative to online booking. That would have been to go to Strabane bus station, a mile closer to where I live, and purchase from ticket from the booth there. My phone enquiry to the Translink service revealed that I would have to pay £25 for a same-day return to take the same Letterkenny to Dublin bus, boarding just a few minutes after its departure time from Lifford.

On the conversion rate for the day, that worked out at €31.81 – an extra €10 (give or take a few cent) for a journey that was shorter by a combined two miles.

So I walked the extra mile. Well, I drove it, but I could have parked my car in Strabane, walked over to Lifford for the connection, come back on the bus through Strabane (checking my car en route)  and then  disembarked there on my evening return. The online ticket only stipulates a point of boarding and who was going to prevent me getting off a stop earlier.

Next time I'll take a stroll past the 'Tinnies'.

That way, I could have saved my tenner and had a pleasant stroll up Bradley Way, across the grassy knell of the quaintly named Camel’s Hump with the wonderful ‘Tinney’ sculptures in the ‘Let the Dance Begin’ installation. Now that I’ve found my way to Dublin, spent my saved tenner on a hearty pub lunch, and returned again all at the border bonanza rate, I think I’ll just do that.

Right to the heart of a Maiden City

Cross the river to avoid constraints.

As a fairly regular commuter to Derry, I have a strong interest in the proposed upgrading to a dual carriageway of the A5 road from Aughnacloy to Newbuildings. Despite more than 2,000 objections, a public inquiry has now1 given the go-ahead  for the work which already has a budget of £330 million.

However, at the risk of prolonging the tailbacks and road hazards, I want to raise yet another objection. It is based on empirical research and, while it might seem impertinent, I think it should be on the table before the bulldozers move in. This is not least because it might stand a better chance of winning back the €400 million that the Dublin government allocated to the project before backing out of the deal.

Agreeing a cross-border road to Derry City.

So here is my concern: the planning has focused on the wrong road entirely, well, the wrong route from Victoria Bridge to the Maiden City.

For those familiar with the North-West Passage, this is the part which snakes its way for about 20 miles through (or around after the roadworks) Sion Mills, Strabane, Ballymagorry, Cloghcor, Bready and Magheramason (all in Co. Tyrone) before drawing up to the traffic lights in Newbuildings, Co. Derry, and the final Prehen stretch into the city which is excluded from the work.

Roads Service in Northern Ireland has wrestled with this part of the route which hugs the east bank of the River Foyle. All along, the answer to their problem was over on the west bank; i.e. in the other jurisdiction.

By entering Co. Donegal, the route could:

• Avoid major centres of settlement;

• Extend right into the heart of Derry City;

• Link with the dual carriageway (plus under-deck) Craigavon Bridge;

• Better serve Letterkenny and all north and west Donegal;

• Provide a road that can readily justify Dublin government funding.

Such a road would depart the current A5 route just north of Victoria Bridge, following the general line of Bells Park Road to cross the Border and the River Finn between Clady and Strabane. (The Finn is barely wider than a normal two-lane road at this point.)

With upper and lower decks, Craigavon bridge
offers three lanes each way to connect entire city.

It would then sweep west of Lifford towards Letterkenny before resuming its course to Derry up the Laggan Valley side of the Foyle past Porthall, St Johnston and Carrigans. There it would cross the border into Co. Derry, following the Balloughry Road to join up with the Letterkenny Road, before making its grand final  sweep along the scenic and unimpeded passage down past the Brandywell (GAA and soccer venues) to Craigavon Bridge.

This route would be no longer than the current proposal and it would better serve the entire north-west region in both jurisdictions. Apart from achieving the overall objectives listed above, it would:

• Allay the deep objections of Protestant landowners north of Strabane;

• Allow Derry city nationalists to drive to Dublin through Donegal;

• Provide a real and more direct road link connecting Dublin and Letterkenny;

• Preserve the core integrity of the Foyle; and

• Stake a Dublin government claim to the Maiden City itself.

Now even in these straitened times, that must be worth at least €400 million.

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1 A5 Road Upgrade 'To Get Go-ahead' After Public Inquiry,  by Kevin Magee, BBC, 11 July 2012: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18789327

Mixing sport and geography

Omagh schoolchildren greet the Olympic flame on its passage through Ireland.

It was probably no more than a slip of the tongue but it spoiled my breakfast… and it has been niggling since. The fact that it was a ‘good news story’ on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland hardly alleviated the inexplicable feeling of being slighted once more.

Brother boxers keep her lit on the Border.

I didn’t even catch the name of the reporter who informed listeners that the Olympic flame was ‘now in Ireland, if only for a few hours’ after the symbolic handover between fellow Irish Olympians Wayne McCollough and Michael Carruth at the Border on the Newry to Dundalk road.

It jarred because, by no coincidence, I was actually in Ireland yesterday morning to witness the same Olympic flame making its passage through Omagh, having come from Derry City via Strabane before heading off out the Dromore Road towards Enniskillen and a string of other Irish towns and villages.

The feeling of euphoria I had felt since about the passage of the Olympic flame on a symbolic course that included both parts of Ireland was dissipated by the carelessness of yet another ‘professional’ news reporter who can’t even be bothered to look at a map and know the difference between a country and a state.

Jack Kennedy, 15, carries the flame through Omagh.

‘A few hours’ indeed, I thought, my mind tracing the earlier path of the flame from Belfast through Antrim, along the north coast and through each of these six Irish counties in Northern Ireland before its brief interlude in the Republic of Ireland.

Yet such geographical dismissal should be like water off a duck’s back by now, one would think.

For all of my life, I have listened to unionist politicians talk of ‘Ulster’ and the ‘Ulster people’ in a way that pointedly excluded me and all those in Northern Ireland who espoused Irish reunification, not to mention one-third of the actual province of Ulster. Such geographical and social selectivity was always deliberate, however, a contrived formula to bestow historical pedigree and political legitimacy on the partition of Ireland.

It was anathema to news reporting in most of Ireland, of course. Reporters were reminded forcibly by editors, who were sticklers for ‘House Style’ back then, that there were very precise rules on these matters.

Standards appear have slipped since the Good Friday Agreement (or ‘Belfast Agreement’ in Irish Times house style). And I blame soccer for that.

For just as we prepare to root for the Irish Olympians at the London games, the hype is reaching a crescendo for the European Football Championships. Notwithstanding that the Irish team taking part includes (controversially for some) players from throughout the island, it travels to Poland under the auspices of the breakaway Football Association of Ireland, one of the two bodies that persisted in fielding teams under the name ‘Ireland’ until the 1950s.

Representing Ireland against Brazil at Landesdowne Road in July 1973 were the Shamrock Rovers XI (from back left) Miah Dennehy, Tommy Criag, Paddy Mulligan, Martin O'Neill, Derek Dougan, Alan Hunter, Liam O'Kane and (front from left) Bryan Hamilton, Pat Jennings, Tommy Carroll, Johnny Giles, Don Givens, Terry Conroy and Mick Martin.

Fab Four – Don Givens. Johnny Giles,
Martin O'Neill and Pat Jennings .

It hardly mattered so much at a time when there was little prospect of playing on the world stage, but then the 1970s came along with the Troubles and possibly the best crop of home-grown soccer talent we ever produced. From this, a team was put together in 1973 by the two serving captains of Northern Ireland and the Republic – Derek Dougan and Johnny Giles. With no official backing from the ‘representative’ bodies, they engineered a match with the mighty Brazil in Dublin and, with no official sanction, they had to field as the Shamrock Rovers XI. That didn’t stop them racking up three goals against the world champions’ four.

Despite the continuous efforts of the great Dougan to unite the Irish soccer teams, the divide continues, bolstered by marginal success for Northern Ireland in 1982 and for the Republic on occasions since then. It has become firmly institutionalised with many professional reporters persisting in the belief that rugby’s adherence to an all-Ireland selection is the exception, rather than the rule. Indeed, soccer is the exception.

So as the FAI side heads off for the European finals with a team of varied pedigree, the Irish Football Association and its supporters resort to irony and self-derision. Their favourite chant in recent years is the refrain, ‘We’re not Brazil, we’re Norn Iron’.

As if we need to be reminded.

So as credit union accounts are raided for the road to Poznan, I’ll be looking forward to the Olympics and lamenting that the last outing for the Ireland soccer team was in July 1973 – a glorious sporting occasion ‘if only for a few hours’.