In a TV documentary on BBC last month he sobbed as he read out a letter sent to him by the first hunger striker to die Bobby Sands.

O’Rawe claims three of the five demands were met on July 5, two days before the death of a fifth hunger striker Joe McDonnell.

He insists that it offered that IRA inmates could wear their own clothes, have remission restored and enjoy more visits and letters.Work could include education, though free association in the wings would be banned.

O’Rawe claims McFarlane shouted what was offered out to him. They spoke in Irish, he claimed, so that prison officers could not understand the conversation.

However McFarlane vehemently – and now Scullion - deny any such conversation took place.

Republicans had insisted in July 1981 that a government official would stand over any offer as the IRA/INLA had called off a hunger strike in 1980 before any meeting took place, only to find the British had reneged on the deal.