Today, a report commissioned by the Church of Ireland Hard Gospel Project starkly highlights the views and the experiences of border Protestants living in Clogher Church diocese, which straddles the frontier with Cavan, Monaghan, Louth, Leitrim and Donegal.

It was in this rural region that the ruthless Provisional IRA murder campaign was directed at off-duty UDR and RUC Reserve, many of whom were small farmers living on holdings that had been held by their families for generations.

A favoured IRA tactic was in targeting unmarried Protestant farmers with links to the security forces, in the likelihood that the farm or lease holding would fall out of the family line were the householder to be killed, leading to an erosion of a unionist presence on the border.

This was sectarian genocide and the grim catalogue of lost lives among a loyal and steadfast community was a dark and sinister chapter during the Troubles.

The report is a valuable, timely work, carefully and very sensitively conducted.

Its wider release will highlight just how difficult and fearful it was for members of the minority community to live through a conflict where the aggression mostly emanated from republican terrorists.

The report was conducted as a social inquiry, an exploration and examination of how personal, social, cultural, religious and political experiences influenced people’s attitudes and behaviours on life.

The report recounts that Protestant churches were seen by border worshippers in a dual role as “both a flag and a duvet”; of harrowing stories of folk feeling isolated and surrounded by what were perceived as hostile neighbours in an historic conflict.

However, in spite of the tensions, neighbourly contacts were still maintained across the divide and this expression of politeness and decency did have some effect in halting what could have been a wholesale withdrawal from the border.