Joe Cahill, 78, is hoping to be elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in the North Antrim constituency.

Ian Paisley: opposed the Yes vote

Rev Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, which opposed the recent Yes vote for an assembly, is the Member of Parliament for the area.

Cahill had his death sentence commuted to life after the intervention of the Pope. But in 1973, he was again jailed for gun-running. Around the same time the British Army publicly named him as the Irish Republican Army's chief of staff.

Since then, he has remained active within the republican movement in Northern Ireland.

He was among those who welcomed the jailed Balcombe Street gang to Sinn Fein's conference in Dublin.

When he addressed the conference himself, he spoke about his brush with capital punishment after he was convicted of the murder of a Roman Catholic RUC officer in west Belfast.