When IRA leader Brian Keenan was on his death bed last year he sent for Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.

The veteran republican told the Sinn Fein leader that he wanted two men to speak at his funeral — Adams and Sean Hughes.

During the Belfast funeral oration in May 2008 Adams recalled that meeting.

He said: “He told me that he wanted to make arrangements for his funeral? he said he didn’t think he had much time left.

“He wanted Sean Hughes to say a few words in Cullyhanna and then he said he wanted me to say a few words at the Garden of Remembrance in the Murph (Ballymurphy).” Those words, the fact that Brian Keenan — identified as a hawk in the IRA leadership — wanted Sean Hughes to speak at his funeral tells us a lot.

Keenan was key to the IRA’s war and the IRA’s peace, one of those at the very top of that organisation who made decommissioning possible, who moved the group from a position of “not a bullet, not an ounce”.

You hear people say that Sean Hughes is “a younger version of Brian Keenan? out of the same stable”.

“He is crucial in terms of support for the peace process from senior republicans,” one source commented.

“He’s a highly credible individual in the leadership of the republican movement.”

However, this view of Hughes is not shared by everybody. There is what Peter Robinson said about him in 2002.

Using Parliamentary privilege the now DUP leader said Hughes had been at the heart of IRA bombing attacks in Britain and Northern Ireland and named him as a member of the IRA Army Council, someone who sat at the IRA’s top table.

The south Armagh republican denied what was alleged.

Those in the security world who know Hughes describe him as “a dangerous man” and “an extremely dangerous player”.

“He’s got a long history,” one senior police source told this newspaper. Another source described him as “a key player”.

“The dogs in the street know that,” he added.

But republicans will dismiss that as the anonymous talk and briefings of the so-called “securocrats”.

However, what is clear is that had Brian Keenan or Sean Hughes strayed with those now described as dissident republicans then those dissidents would pose a much greater threat today.

But they, along with other key leadership figures, stayed with Adams and McGuinness and inside the republican movement were salesmen for the peace strategy and process.

And this is what I mean about reading and hearing very different descriptions of Sean Hughes.

He is in the eyes of the security forces that “dangerous man” and “extremely dangerous player”.

But republicans see him entirely differently — as someone who is as influential, credible and important in the peace as he was in the war.