Originally Posted by
Skipcool3
But nothing to stop them crossing the land border, is there.....
Nope, and therein lies the rub. The CTA is very odd; a big political fudge. I have occasionally seen UK immigration with PSNI at BHD checking documents of random passengers, I assume to catch people who haven't regularised their travel between the Republic and the North.
It's a good thing the land border is essentially invisible; historically this was mostly on principle rather than practicality (plenty of interesting history there!).
The CTA continues to catch people out, however, as it applies only to British and Irish citizens. It's not a Schengen-like arrangement.