This publication looks at the population and the housing characteristics of residential dwellings within 10km distance of a border crossing into Northen Ireland and is based on a matching exercise involving:

• the coordinates of dwellings enumerated in Census 2011 and 2016
• the coordinates of official border crossings between Northern Ireland and Ireland
• the road network from Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi)

This exercise uses an origin-destination routing algorithm, within a Geographical Information System (GIS), which identified the nearest border crossing location for dwellings on the Census 2011 and Census 2016 datasets using the official road network.

An example is shown below in Figures 1 and 2 to explain the workings of the routing algorithm. Figure 1 shows the location of a residential dwelling at point A, and two points at B and C which represent two border crossings, as well as the outline of the OSi road network. The routing algorithm identifies the nearest crossing point to the dwelling at A, which, in the example is point B, and then plots the shortest-path route and distance between A and B (marked orange in Figure 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

This report complements the “Measuring Distance to Everyday Services in Ireland” publication which looked at how close or far away people in Ireland lived from common everyday facilities such as schools, hospitals, public transport, post offices and banks.

Main Findings

• There were 128,106 people in Ireland who lived a short driving distance, (less than 10km), from an official border crossing-point into Northern Ireland in 2016, representing 2.7% of the total population.
• About 2,300 people lived less than 500 metres from a border crossing, while 14,205 lived within 2km, equivalent to a half-hour walking distance.
• The largest number of people within 10km of a border crossing to Northern Ireland was in Louth (41,972), followed by Monaghan (39,485) and Donegal (34,160).
• There were 7,037 people living in Ireland in 2016 who commuted into Northern Ireland for work, and over half of these (3,638) lived within 10km of a border crossing.
• Closer to the border there was a higher vacancy rate, with 15.7% of dwellings vacant within 2km of a border crossing. In contrast, the vacancy rate across the State in 2016 was 9.4%.
• Around 30% of homes within 10km of Northern Ireland were built since 2001.
• The closest town or village to Northern Ireland is Pettigo in Donegal where the average distance to the border from each dwelling is 423 metres, followed by Kildrum, Donegal (526 metres), Blacklion, Cavan (540 metres) and Muff, Donegal (934 metres).