Protestants living along the border have still not come to terms with the election of Bobby Sands as an MP for the area, nearly three decades later.

A Church of Ireland report entitled "Whatever You Say, Say Nothing" interviewed Protestants living along the border in Fermanagh and Tyrone. The report concluded that in many cases Protestant families felt that the IRA had attempted to ethnically cleanse them from the border counties, and that their futures remain uncertain even today.

"The question of whether or not there had been a concerted campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' in the border regions was for most interviewees an accepted fact," the report found.

"Many people were able to articulate various detailed accounts of how this occurred in practice, identifying the individuals and families directly affected and in some cases going further and identifying those they believed - often citing this as 'common knowledge' - had carried out the acts of violent terrorism."

The study, jointly funded by the Irish government and the International Fund for Ireland to help develop Protestant communities in cross-border areas, found that elements of political history remained an open wound even today.

In 1981 Bobby Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone while on hunger strike in the H Blocks.

While nationalists saw Sands' victory as sending a warning to then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Protestant community saw the vote as support for the IRA.

"Many Protestants and Unionists saw it, both then and now, as a clear and unambiguous vote of support for the retention of the 'armed struggle' and the purging of Protestants from the land," it said.

"They couldn't understand it then and they still can't. The collective 'nailing of the colors to the mast' was stark and shocking, but made things very clear - whatever about our previous neighborliness, whatever about our friendly and cooperative arrangements, all of that is now over.

"In the eyes of some, any pretense of trust and cooperation between the communities was, and remains, just that - pretense."