Peace explains why the term “Monaghan Salient” has fallen out of use
The Monaghan Way, near the border with south Armagh. The contours of the border became a vexed issue in the decades between partition and the Belfast Agreement.
In the noun form, however, salients are often problematic. That’s because then they refer to territory, usually disputed. Indeed, they tend to arise only during wars, along shifting front lines, where they can be a hazard to armies on both sides.Funny Peculiar – Frank McNally on the unhilarious St Hilary and the legal term named after him
The original “Monaghan Salient”, to which my former colleague alluded, was a minor affair in comparison with those. Still, as late as 1988, the Belfast Newsletter complained in a feature on Border security: “In the Monaghan salient, that large bump of Éire which projects into Ulster between Co Fermanagh and Co Armagh, there are only 11 anti-terrorist officers – on a good day.”
So by way of remedy, the Gazette called for a new border running in a straight line “from Dundalk to Castle Saunderson in Co Fermanagh”.Simple as it sounded, that ingenious plan was not taken up by the governments in Stormont or London.
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