Tributes have been paid to former IRA hunger striker Sean McKenna, who died last weekend.

In October 1980 McKenna was one of seven Republican prisoners who began a hunger strike in the H Blocks in a campaign to demand political status.

After 53 days on hunger strike the 26-year-old had fallen into a coma and was hours away from death when IRA leader Brendan "Dark" Hughes called an end to the protest after assurances that the British government had agreed a compromise.

In the interim the "agreement" between the prisoners and the British government collapsed, and a second fateful hunger strike was begun by Bobby Sands.

The McKenna family suffered a series of tragedies throughout the Troubles. In 1970 a 17-year-old Sean was interned without trial for three years.

His father, Sean Senior, was one of 14 prisoners known as the "Hooded Men" who suffered torture treatment at the hands of the British Army during internment.

Sean Senior died aged 42 in June 1975 as a result of his injuries.

The British government was later found guilty of torturing the Hooded Men by the European Commission for Human Rights.

In 1976 Sean Junior was abducted by SAS soldiers from his home in the Republic and smuggled back across the border where he was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

He joined the Blanket protest, and when a hunger strike began in October 1980 was among the first prisoners to join.

By day 48 of the hunger strike he had become seriously ill and was blind. On the 53rd day of his fast he had slipped into a coma.

Brendan Hughes was warned that McKenna had just hours to live, but that a document from the British Home Office was on its way into the prison which would meet the prisoners' demands.

Hughes had sworn to McKenna that he wouldn't let him die if he was convinced that the prisoners' demands would be met.

With no way to tell how sick McKenna really was, Hughes accepted the settlement and ended the fast.

Twenty-five years later Hughes would recall, "Before Sean McKenna went into a coma he said to me, 'Dark don't let me die' and I promised him I wouldn't.

"They were putting him onto a stretcher to take him to the hospital, we thought an agreement was on the table and I just shouted up the corridor, 'feed him' and with those two words the first hunger strike was over."

When the hunger strikers stood in the southern elections in June 1981 McKenna received 3,860 votes in North Kerry.

Released from prison in the early nineties, McKenna returned to Co. Louth but is understood to have suffered from health problems as a result of the hunger strike.

He is understood to have been deeply affected by the death of Brendan Hughes, who died in February.

On Friday December 18, exactly 28 years to the day since the first hunger strike ended in 1980, McKenna died suddenly at home in Co. Louth.

Expressing sadness at the death of his former comrade, Sinn Fein TD (Member of Irish Parliament) Arthur Morgan said, "Sean was a friend and comrade for a long number of years and I am deeply saddened at news of his death. He will be sorely missed by his family and friends."