A soft border with an implicit tolerance of smuggling at a certain level (which in reality is what we have today vs the rest of the world - witness the amount o

A soft border with an implicit tolerance of smuggling at a certain level (which in reality is what we have today vs the rest of the world - witness the amount of fake-certified and dangerous goods that come in from eg China with no real enforcement), together with cooperation on enforcement for the bigger offenders (eg the UK assisting in stopping goods before they reach the border if they are destined for RoI and known not to comply with EU standards) would seem to be the pragmatic solution. I don’t think the two sides are really all that far apart on this point. As I mentioned, the much bigger issue is regulatory alignment more generally for reasons which are not related to border infrastructure (North-South cooperation and the all island economy), where there is a much bigger gap between the sides.