VETERAN republican Seamus McGrane has been a staunch opponent of the current peace process, having split from the Provisional IRA in 1997 in opposition to the Sinn Féin strategy.
Along with Michael McKevitt, he was at a meeting in a remote farmhouse near Oldcastle in Co. Meath in November, 1997 when the Real IRA was formed.
McKevitt who was 'Quartermaster General', was believed to have taken a large stash of the Provos weapons arsenal with him and McGrane was appointed 'Director of Training' for the new dissident organisation, teaching young recruits with no former paramilitary experience.
He had a previous conviction of IRA membership dating back to 1976. His conviction for directing terrorism is only the second time anyone has been convicted of that charge in the Republic, McKevitt being the first.
In Northern Ireland only UDA leader Johnny Adair has been successfully convicted of the offence.
During a Real IRA training session at a remote farm near Stamullen in Co Meath in October, 1999, the Garda, Emergency Response Unit swooped on the premises arresting a group of ten men in an underground cellar.
Among them a then teenage Alan Ryan, the Real IRA leader who was shot dead in Dublin in 2012, as part of a feud with a drug dealing gang.
An assault rifle, a sub-machine gun, a pistol and a rocket launcher and ammunition were also recovered from the cellar.
McGrane was jailed for four years by the Special Criminal Court in 2001 in relation to the training camp.
In 2009 he formed the group known as Oglaigh na hEireann (ONH) taking with him a number of seasoned South Armagh bomb makers.
The group quickly became the most active of the armed dissident groups, involved in bombings and numerous paramilitary style shootings.
His co accused Donal O'Coisdealbha was a significant recruit for Oglaigh na hEireann as he was previously unknown to police.
His stepfather, James Monaghan, was one of the so called Colombia Three who was arrested in Colombia in 2001, convicted of training FARC guerillas in bomb making and who fled to Ireland in 2004.
O'Coisdealbha was considered an asset because of his clean record and technical expertise as a trained engineer.
Since being sentenced last year to five and a half years in prison, O'Coisdealbha is on the landing in Portlaoise Prison reserved for the so called New IRA and is being looked after by that organisation's prisoners group.
