Sinn Féin leader Mr Gerry Adams was among several hundred mourners at the funeral today of the first Provisional IRA "Chief of Staff" Mr Seán MacStiofáin.
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Mr Gerry Adams at the funeral today of the first Provisional IRA Chief of Staff Mr Seán MacStiofáin.
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Mr MacStiofáin died last week aged 73 after a long illness. He was buried near his home in Navan in Co Meath following a Mass offered in Irish.
Mr MacStiofáin was the first military leader of the Provisional IRA after the 1969 split in the republican movement and headed the group during some of the bloodiest years of the Northern Ireland conflict.
A one-time RAF corporal whose mother was from Northern Ireland he first became linked to the republican cause in the 1940s when he formed an IRA group in Britain.
He was later jailed for eight years for stealing firearms and while in prison learned Irish and studied the political situation in Ireland.
Mr MacStiofáin stepped down as head of the IRA after ending a 57-day hunger strike in 1972. He had been arrested and sentenced to six months by the Special Criminal Court for IRA membership.
Other republican figures at today's ceremony included Mr Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Mr Gerry Adams's predecessor as Sinn Fein leader, who quit the Provisionals in the mid-1980s.
He was also a prominent member of Conradh na Gaeilge. The graveside oration was given by a former president of that organisation Ms Ite Ní Chionnaith.
PA