The former head of the official IRA, Cathal Goulding, has died in a Dublinhospital at the age of seventy-five.

Mr Goulding, born in Dublin in 1922, was from a family with strong IRA links.

In the Second World War he was interned in the Irish Republic and jailed in Britain in 1950.

He led the IRA during its split in the late nineteen sixties, when the Provisional IRA emerged in Northern Ireland at the forefront of the violent campaign against Britain.

After a ceasefire by the official IRA in 1972, Mr Goulding became fiercely critical of the provisional IRA's activities.