Well that's what I was expecting with INT2 then I read a couple of reports on-line that said otherwise. which to be honest I thought was rather daft, why would a MCU man. bother doing that. Certainly I found nothing in the data sheet to allow me to confirm this and surely that should be the only source of accurate data.
Proper Port addressing seems to be the best and most robust way of doing this task. and with the knowledge gained from this exercise and help given here that is certainly the only way I will be handling them in future.